The Legal Structure of the Proposed International Seabed Authority

Abstract

The continuing international dispute over the seabed area beyond the limits of national jurisdiction is a phenomenon of a special and important kind. The conflict concerned the ownership of the seabed area and its substantial amount of wealth. There is a wide range of contentious questions to be decided; those questions are related to problems of economic, legal, military and scientific kinds. This is one of the most important issues in history which will crucially determine the distribution of wealth and welfare in the world for years to come. So, we are praying for a successful solution, based on international control of the area and its resources so as to share the benefits, and to close the existing inequalities among nations which divide them and to increase their division for ever. This thesis is an attempt to deal with the problem in the light of the UN Conferences on the Law of the Sea. It consists of an introductory chapter (The importance of the seabed area and the material therein). The importance of the historical review -cause of conflict, its effect on present time (a historical development for establishing the proposed International Seabed Authority since 1967 until the present time) have been dealt with in six chapters. The first chapter is devoted to describing the beginning of the problem, the Maltese move in UN, and the Ad Hoc Committee work. Chapter two is concerned with the Seabed Committee work for the period 1969. The seabed politics and the Law of the Sea, 1970-73, is the subject of Chapter three. In this chapter the problem concerning the elaboration of a regime for the international seabed area: proposals and positions in the seabed committee and the state of seabed politics. At the end of the seabed meetings Chapter four has dealt with the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, 1973-74, Caracas session. Geneva session 1974-75 is the matter of Chapter five, while the sixth chapter is concerned with New York session 1977. The research has sought to analyse the different aspects of the problem concluding our study in considering what type of international seabed authority might best be able to resolve some of the basic difficulties, best reconcile the various conflicting interests involved, and best serve the needs of the international community as a whole

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