The Disputes Of The Breadth Of The Territorial Seas On The Second United Nations Conference On The Law Of The Sea

Since the 20 th century,with the development of fishing and weaponry technology,more and more countries broke the conventional limit of 3-nautical-mile territorial sea,and occupied vaster territorial sea to fulfill their economic,military and other needs,leading to an increasingly disordered international maritime order.At the Hague Conference of 1930,the participating countries held their own opinions and didn't compromise with each other which leading to the meeting failed and the territorial sea issue was internationalized.After World War ?,further developed science and technology,rising demand for marine resources and in particular the Marine enclosure movement triggered by the 1945 Truman Announcement exacerbated the contradiction of the breadth of territorial sea.Therefore,UNCLOS I was convened in Geneva at 1958.But due to the disparity of the strength on oceans among each country,the cold war and so on,each country held different propositions,causing the issue of the territorial sea unsolved.UNCLOS ? was convened in 1960 in order to solve the issue of the territorial sea.The USA proposal,the Canadian proposal,the Soviet proposal,the Mexican proposal,the 16-power proposal were proposed at the beginning of the meeting,among which the U.S.proposal and the Canadian proposal held the 6-mile territorial sea,the Soviet proposal,the Mexican proposal,and the 16 power proposal held the 12-mile territorial sea.After the game between the parties at the meeting,the proposals that were eventually submitted to the General Assembly mainly included the USA-Canada joint proposal which held 6-mile territorial sea,the 18-power proposal which held 12-mile territorial sea and some special proposals.As the countries at the meeting were influenced by the US-Soviet contending for hegemony,they didn't compromise with each other,the meeting did not form a final resolution on the issue of territorial sea.Although the UK and Canada actively sought after the USA to support their "multilateral agreement" proposal which is in order to resolve the issue of territorial sea regionally,the USA didn't agree with them due to national security considerations.The issue of territorial sea width still needs to be coordinated and cooperation by all parties concerned.The failure of the UNCLOS ? caused the UNCLOS ?I to give full consideration to the importance of the third world countries.