The structure and effects of the decision process in the Seabed Committee and the Third United Nations Conference on The Law of the Sea1

Eight years of work on the Law of the Sea, conducted in various United Nations bodies and three rounds of a United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, have produced a high probability of official failure. The complex, cumbersome, and inefficient decision system of the Law of the Sea Conference is largely to blame for this result. It was a major error to attempt to negotiate the entire Law of the Sea simultaneously. During the first two sessions, in 1974 and 1975, difficult decisions were postponed repeatedly, thus multiplying the problems in an already very difficult situation. The Group of 77 was effectively captured by coastal states, leading to a Revised Single Negotiating Text that fails to meet the interests of landlocked and geographically disadvantaged states as well as those of the most advanced maritime states on scientific research, and distant-water fishing states. A number of these states are unlikely to sign a convention in the near future; and even if some agreement is reached at a future session of the Law of the Sea Conference, the new regime will be difficult to apply universally in the way that the old one was. A variety of conflicts is likely to proliferate, and detailed regional or sub-regional negotiations will continue. No universal solution to Law of the Sea issues is likely to emerge.