Ratification of UNCLOS key to preserving four critical navigation rights U.S. military needs for national security

Our Navy can better protect the United States and the American people if we join the Law of the Sea Convention.

The Law of the Sea Convention is the bedrock legal instrument for public order in the world’s oceans. It codifies, in a manner that only binding treaty law can, the navigation and overflight rights, and high seas freedoms that are essential for the global strategic mobility of our Armed Forces, including:

• The Right of Innocent Passage, which allows ships to transit through foreign territorial seas without providing the coastal State prior notification or gaining the coastal State’s prior permission.
• The Right of Transit Passage, which allows ships, aircraft, and submarines to transit through, over, and under straits used for international navigation and the approaches to those straits.
• The Right of Archipelagic Sealanes Passage, which, like transit passage, allows transit by ships and aircraft through, over, and under normal passage routes in archipelagic states, such as Indonesia.
• The right of high seas freedoms, including overflight and transit within the Exclusive Economic Zone.

Innocent Passage, Transit Passage, and Archipelagic Sealanes Passage are the crown jewels of navigation and overflight. These rights are vital not just to our Navy, but also to our Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. They make it possible to move vast quantities of war materiel through the Straits of Gibraltar, Singapore, Malacca, and Hormuz and into the Arabian Gulf to Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines in Iraq. These rights permit us to move our submarine fleet through choke points to conduct all missions. They permit the United States Air Force to conduct global missions without requirement to overfly foreign national airspace. And they ensure the uninterrupted flow of commerce to and from our shores.