| Popis: |
This chapter considers how the negotiations over the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1973–1982 exacerbated the unsettled status of the islands, and since then, how it has given room for regional states to lay claims to them under the protection of international law. While UNCLOS introduces the notion and practice of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and extends continental shelf rights, allowing littoral states, including China, to exercise extended control over the seas beyond their borders, it makes no reference to historic rights and cognate rights, which are, however, at the heart of China’s territorial claims. In the midst of the UNCLOS III negotiations, the US began to take steps to enforce freedom of navigation and overflight unilaterally. Its Freedom of Navigation Operations programme was set up in 1979 to prevent states from making ‘excessive maritime claims’. |
