ABSTRACT
The sovereignty of a coastal State extends beyond its land territory and internal waters, and in the case of an archipelagic State, its archipelagic waters, over an adjacent belt of sea described as the territorial sea. (United Nations 1983, p. 3)
Since 1930 there have been four international conferences seeking to establish a comprehensive law of the sea. The conferences held in 1930 and 1960 failed to produce any definite results. The 1958 conference produced four conventions which were endorsed by several states and which still apply. The 1973 conference ended in December 1982 when 119 delegations signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. That Convention will come into effect one year after the sixtieth country has ratified it. Although it is not expected that this event will occur for some years, there is plenty of evidence that many important rules of the convention are already being observed by a number of states. Competition for exclusive control of areas of seas and seabed in the
present period has been likened to the scramble for colonies by European countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. Just as those periods witnessed the construction on a grand scale of boundaries which today still form the framework of national sovereignty, so this modern period is recording the proliferation of maritime limits which will determine national control of areas of the seas in the foreseeable future. This chapter begins by examining the origin of maritime claims by
states and then continues with a description of zones which can be claimed. There is then an analysis of the problems associated with drawing the three basic maritime boundaries. These boundaries are the baseline, the edge of the continental margin, and international boundaries between adjacent or opposite states.
