Thread: Somali Pirates Shoot Holes in Law of Sea Treaty

Somali Pirates Shoot Holes in Law of Sea Treaty
Thursday, April 9, 2009 7:01 PM
By: David A. Patten

Opponents of the controversial Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty say Wednesday’s hijacking of a cargo vessel off the coast of Somalia has laid bare a major flaw in the treaty’s language that cripples its effectiveness against pirates.

According to the United Nations, over 110 pirate attacks have occurred off the horn of Africa since 2007.

The Law of the Sea treaty, which has been approved by over 150 countries but not by the United States, specifies the jurisdictions that nations have over their territorial waters, including mineral rights. It also states that all countries have the right to seize and capture pirates.

Experts say however that what the convention clearly did not envision were failed nations such as Somalia, which are unable to police their own territorial waters.

The underlying assumption of the treaty was that countries would be ready, willing, and able to police their own waters. In the case of Somalia, whose surrounding waters have seen a 200 percent increase in piracy in the past two years, that clearly is not the case.

Somalia’s neighbor Kenya has stepped in try to fill the void. It has signed memoranda of understanding with the United States and European countries, agreeing to help prosecute any pirates captured in nearby waters.

Those agreements have drawn fire from international human rights, groups, however, who say Kenya’s judicial system cannot be trusted to deliver justice.

Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Moses Wetangula, told VOA News.com that international indifference over the fate of Somalia shoulders some of the blame.

“Partly, this menace is born out of our collective failure to resolve the problems of Somalia,â€

2007 article on the Law of the Sea Treaty

U.S. Sovereignty Threatened by U.N. Treaty, Critics Charge
Sunday, September 16, 2007 8:35 PM
By: Chris Gonsalves

U.S. scientists aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy are mapping the ocean floor in an effort to claim territory that holds an estimated 400 billion barrels of untapped undersea oil and gas.

The U.S. is poised to turn much of its authority on the high seas over to international arbiters by ratifying a long-controversial United Nations sea treaty.

Approval of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a 25-year-old international treaty regulating use of the world’s oceans, is steaming full speed ahead in the Senate, where committee hearings are set to begin Sept. 27.

The full Senate is likely to ratify the treaty -- which would link U.S. naval actions to those of 155 other member nations -- by year's end.

For decades, critics have derided the 182-page Law of the Sea pact as a threat to U.S. sovereignty and naval independence.

They add that it would create a massive new U.N. bureaucracy (the International Seabed Authority); would give environmentalists a back door to greater regulation; and would hinder the U.S. military's efforts to capture terrorists on the high seas.

“This is nothing less than a raid on our sovereignty,â€

[quote]Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Moses Wetangula, told VOA News.com that international indifference over the fate of Somalia shoulders some of the blame.
“Partly, this menace is born out of our collective failure to resolve the problems of Somalia,â€