Sec. 233. Statement of policy on becoming a state party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
511 words·~2 min read·
/bill/116/s/4629/is/section-233·A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
It is the sense of Congress that— becoming a state party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), done at Montego Bay on December 10, 1992, would help protect and advance United States national and economic security including by— ensuring worldwide access to get our troops to the fight, to sustain them during the fight, and to get back home without the permission of other countries; influencing the resolution of disputes between the People’s Republic of China and our allies in the South China Sea and elsewhere; ensuring that the United States is able to assert an internationally accepted claim to its share of the Arctic; providing United States companies with the legal certainty they need to secure rare earth minerals from the deep seabed; and allowing United States companies the full protection of the treaty’s framework for laying and protecting submarine cables; becoming a state party to the Convention would give the United States the voice and vote in decisions relating to deliberative matters under the Convention and thereby improve the ability of the United States to— intervene as a full party to disputes relating to navigational rights, maritime security, energy development, transcontinental commerce, marine conservation, and environmental destruction; and defend United States interpretations of the Convention’s provisions and United States interests, including those relating to whether coastal States have a right under UNCLOS to regulate foreign military activities in their EEZs; the People’s Republic of China’s construction of artificial islands, in support of China’s expanding military presence in the Pacific theatre, in the territorial waters of its neighbors along the South China Sea are hostile acts that escalate tensions between the People’s Republic of China and its neighbors, infringe on the sovereignty of China’s neighbors’ EEZs, and have resulted in an arbitration under the UNCLOS in which the arbitral tribunal ruled against the People’s Republic of China; the United States status as a nonparty to UNCLOS resulted in the United States exclusion from the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s July 12, 2016, case in the matter of the South China Sea arbitration, wherein the Permanent Court of Arbitration stated that the Tribunal forwarded to the Parties for their comment a Note Verbale from the Embassy of the United States of America, requesting to send a representative to observe the hearing and the Tribunal communicated to the Parties and the U.S.
Embassy that it had decided that ; only interested States parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea will be admitted as observers and thus could not accede to the U.S. request relying on customary international norms and on other countries to assert claims on behalf of the United States is insufficient to defend and uphold United States national and economic security and United States sovereign rights and interests; the Senate should urgently provide advice and consent to ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; and the United States should urgently become a state party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.