Maritime Security and Oceans Policy

The negotiators and decision makers at the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) between 1973 and 1982 may not have considered the implications for how coastal states would manage their respective extended maritime zones and what security considerations would arise. They were understandably more concerned with the immediacy of the international strategic problems ahead. The three principal committees of UNCLOS III from 1973 to 1982 were focused on:1 Committee One. The problem of the legal regime of the seabed. 2 Committee Two. The regimes of the territorial sea and contiguous zone, con-tinental shelf, exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and fishing and conservation of the living resources of the high seas, and questions relating to straits and archipelagic states.