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
The ISA, the institutional component that led the Reagan administration not to support the Convention in 1982, has remained a obstacle for a few vocal critics of the Convention in America. Although the ISA is the only new body created by the Convention that is explicitly authorized to make policy, its mandate is narrow, related to steps furthering security of tenure for those seeking to explore for minerals or mine on the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. The Part XI Implementation Agreement, which is now read together with the Convention to govern the ISA's operations, rectified all of the Reagan administration's objections to the original Part XI (the administration's only objections to the Convention). The objectionable provisions related to an asserted lack of guaranteed access for qualified private miners, the possibility of payments to national liberation movements, mandatory technology transfers, production limita- tions, and a review conference that could amend Part XI over the objection of the U.S. or other states. The George W. Bush administration has emphasized the 1994 changes with respect to these provisions. It has also emphasized 1994 changes concerning the U.S. role in how the ISA makes its decisions, changes that give the U.S. an effective veto over ISA decisions. Since its inception, the ISA has operated on a low budget and has confined its activities to its specified mandate, behavior that should reassure skeptics who fear an expensive, bloated international bureaucracy.
The critics seem naively to believe that America can simply shoot its way around the oceans, apparently including shooting our NATO allies, such as Canada, with whom we disagree about Arctic straits. Most shamefully, the critics repeat, despite all correction, that the Convention would turn the oceans over to the United Nations. But to the contrary, in its 200 nautical mile economic zones and extended coastal state continental shelves the Convention embodies one of the greatest expansions of national jurisdiction in history and absolutely nothing is turned over to the United Nations. Moreover, the closely cabined International Seabed Authority (ISA), necessary to create bankable property rights for seabed mining, only has jurisdiction over mineral resources of the seafloor in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Far from a menacing international agency poised to take over the world, after a quarter-century of operation the ISA has a staff of 39, considerably smaller than the staff of at least one of the domestic organizations most visibly opposing the Convention. The ISA is simply a small garden variety specialized international agency similar to many in which the United States participates, for example the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. Even were the critics correct, United States non-adherence to the Convention would not in the slightest end the ISA or change the Convention which is one of the most widely adhered to in the world.
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.