UNCLOS is not administered by the United Nations
The United Nations has virtually no role in management, implementation, or execution of this treaty. It remains in the convention’s title only because the treaty was initially negotiated at the United Nations. In addition, the only international organization UNCLOS creates (the International Seabed Authority) is no different from the hundreds of other international organizations the U.S. is already party to, including the U.S.- Canadian Fisheries Convention or the International Maritime Organization.
Quicktabs: Arguments
This brings us to the keystone in the arch of opposition. The treaty is officially titled the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And anything that bears the imprimatur of the United Nations is immediately and unconditionally dead on arrival in a certain tranche of senatorial offices. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), for example, has suggested the United Nations is “ineffective, they’ve been wasteful, there’s corruption, and there is deep concern that there is a lot of anti-American sentiment.”
Here’s the thing: The United Nations has virtually no role in management, implementation, or execution of this treaty. It remains in the convention’s title only because the treaty was initially negotiated at the United Nations.
The treaty itself does not establish U.N. oversight of any aspect of its implementation. It creates separate management bodies, like the International Seabed Authority, which work to regulate multinational operations in international waters without a direct link to the organization that has attracted so much vitriol from the protectionist wing of the conservative movement.
Apparently, conservative conspiracy theorists’ fears about the United Nations’s purported push for creation of a world government are stronger than their ties to Big Oil, corporate America, and military contractors. As Secretary Clinton put it, “Whatever arguments may have existed for delaying U.S. accession no longer exist and truly cannot even be taken with a straight face.”
The lack of support for this treaty among some GOP lawmakers is stunning. It shows once again that conservatives’ ideological opposition to the United Nations is getting in the way of smart planning for our natural resources.
In their letter to Senator Reid, the thirty-one signers were concerned with subjugating U.S. sovereignty “to a supranational government that is chartered by the United Nations.”10 Leading conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly described the conservative perspective on the treaty as follows:
LOST [UNCLOS] is the globalists’ dream bill [because] it would put the United Nations in a de facto world government that rules the world’s oceans under the pretense that they belong to the ‘common heritage of mankind.’ That is global speak for allowing the United Nations and its affiliated or- ganizations to carry out a massive unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the United States to other countries.11
This perspective ignores the fact that the United States had been in- volved in negotiations on the wording of UNCLOS since the time of Presi- dent Nixon.12 In 1983, during the Reagan administration, the United States supported the convention with the exception of the deep seabed provisions. President Reagan stated that the United States would recognize the rights of other states in the waters off their coasts as reflected in the convention.13 After President Reagan refused to endorse ratification due to the deep seabed issues, additional negotiations in the United Nations took place, resulting in the “Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of UNCLOS,” dated 28 July 1994, which satisfied the Reagan conditions. After a yearlong inter-agency review, the Bush administration concluded that all of the concerns raised by President Reagan were addressed by the 1994 Amendments.14 Thus, rather than UNCLOS being forced on the United States by the United Nations, it was instead negotiated with the full participation of the United States, and later specifically amended to answer the objections of President Reagan.
Contrary to the isolationists’ belief, the United Nations is not involved in implementing, administering, or enforcing UNCLOS. The convention not the United Nations, establishes a number of distinct bodies, separate from the United Nations, to handle specific issues. These include the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf15 and the International Sea Bed Authority.16 The Authority is composed of three bodies: the Assembly, the Council, and the Secretariat.17 Each member nation has one representa- tive in the Assembly.18 The Council is a body of thirty-six persons. As the largest economy in terms of gross national product, if the United States ratified UNCLOS, the United States would have a permanent place on the Council.19 The Council nominates persons for the Secretariat and the As- sembly votes on them.20 An agency called the Enterprise, which works in deep seabed mining, has not been called into action, as mining has yet to start.21 The final organization is the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.22 The Tribunal consists of twenty-one members elected by the parties to the Convention and is based in Hamburg, Germany. While UNCLOS establishes various bodies, they are distinct from and independent of the United Nations, which is not involved in administering UNCLOS.