ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL LAW GOVERNING THE RIGHTS OF LANDLOCKED STATES ACCESS TO THE SEA AND PARTICIPATION IN MARINE RESOURCES
This paper assesses the effectiveness of the international laws governing the rights of landlocked states of access to the sea and participation in marine resources. It traces the development of those rights from the early doctrine of passage and the river and League of Nations transit regimes to the 1958 Geneva Convention, the 1965 New York Convention and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and then examines each entitlement in the light of its text, rationale, treaty practice, scholarship and case law. The paper finds that international law does not confer a single ocean resource right but a set of differentiated entitlements of varying strength. The right of access and freedom of transit under Part X is legally established although its modalities are negotiated; participation in the surplus living resources of the exclusive economic zone under Article 69 is the most heavily qualified entitlement, because its key terms are undefined and depend on determinations made by the coastal state; and the freedoms of the high seas and participation in the Area are formally secure but depend on access and national capacity. The paper concludes that the framework is effective in recognising rights but less effective in giving them certain content and enforceable force, and that its effectiveness diminishes as a right becomes more dependent on the discretion of another state.
Keywords: Landlocked States, Access to the Sea, Freedom of Transit, Marine Resources, UNCLOS, Effectiveness.
