Tommy Koh on undersea sabotage: «We need to make it an international crime»
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- Category: Derecho marítimo
- Published on Thursday, 26 June 2025 05:45
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Former Singaporean diplomat Tommy Koh led the negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). He now recognizes its shortcomings, but still believes it to be the best possible agreement.
Workers are laying a submarine cable in the Baltic Sea. The important data connections lie unprotected on the seabed – sabotage in international waters is difficult to prosecute.
Summary
- Diplomat Tommy Koh underlines the continued relevance of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which has been ratified by 170 countries. He argues that new agreements like the High Seas Treaty expand its scope.
- Although the U.S. has never ratified the convention, it adheres to its principles, while China questions certain rules such as compulsory dispute settlement procedures.
- Issues like sabotage of submarine cables or lack of provisions for rising sea levels highlight UNCLOS' weaknesses, but Koh emphasizes that renegotiating the agreement today is highly unrealistic.
Some 170 countries have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, also known by its acronym UNCLOS. It is one of the international agreements signed by the most member states. The agreement was negotiated over the course of 11 rounds between 1973 and 1982 in New York, Geneva and Caracas. A key figure in bringing the talks to a successful close was Tommy Koh, the now 87-year-old Singaporean diplomat who chaired the final years of negotiations. This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
The world was divided. Nevertheless, we managed to reach a consensus.
That sounds like a minor miracle. How did you manage to get the two rival superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, onto the same page? And take into account the interests of another 160 countries?
Interestingly, the interests of the Soviet Union and the U.S., the G-2, coincided. They demanded freedom of navigation . . .
So they wanted to move freely across the world's oceans with their large navies.
Exactly. A conflict arose between the G-2 and the coastal states. The latter wanted to control as large an area of sea as possible off their coasts. Traditionally, territorial waters only extended three nautical miles, but some countries wanted to extend this to up to 200 nautical miles.
That would be the equivalent of 370 kilometers. They then agreed on the famous 12-mile zone, which is approximately 22 kilometers. How was this figure chosen?
That was the compromise that the G-2 could agree on. The problem was that this meant that many straits fell under the control of the coastal states. The major powers feared that important transit routes could be denied to them. That is why an exception was made for warships and submarines: the so-called transit passage.
Zur Person
Tommy Koh, ambassador-at-large
It has now been 43 years since the negotiations were concluded. Is the convention still relevant today?
Yes. Under UNCLOS, it is possible for the UN General Assembly to adopt implementing agreements. This was achieved in 1985 on the issue of fisheries and two years ago with the High Seas Treaty. It is therefore possible to expand the scope of UNCLOS to include new issues.
The U.S. was involved in the original negotiations and helped draft the convention, but never ratified it. Is that a problem?
No. The U.S. supports the convention. Its position is that most of the provisions of the convention reflect customary international law and that it expects all nations to comply with them, including China. Beijing repeatedly criticizes Washington, arguing that the U.S. should join the convention before lecturing others on maritime law . . .
Don’t the Chinese have a point?
Yes, of course. It is an embarrassment for the Americans that they haven't ratified the convention. The irony is that since 1982, every U.S. Secretary of State, every Secretary of Defense, and every Chief of Naval Operations has spoken out in favor of ratifying UNCLOS. A small group of neoconservatives is preventing this from happening. I am convinced that the Americans will ratify UNCLOS at some point, in line with Winston Churchill's statement: «You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.»
By not ratifying UNCLOS, the U.S. is also not involved in the International Seabed Authority (ISA). What disadvantage does this create for them?
During the UNCLOS negotiations, seabed minerals were declared the common heritage of humankind. The aim was to prevent large industrial nations from exploiting these resources and leaving technologically less developed countries empty-handed. The ISA was established to set the rules for the extraction of minerals. It is also responsible for issuing licenses for the exploration and mining of minerals. Otherwise, the principle of the freedom of the high seas applies – anyone can fish as much as they like on the high seas, for instance.
What does this mean for U.S. companies?
For each license application submitted by a company, a member country must act as sponsor to the ISA. Washington cannot do that. American companies have to establish subsidiaries abroad or convince third countries to sponsor them.