When the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (the Convention) was adopted in 1982 after nine years of negotiations, it was hailed as "the ultimate constitution for the oceans". For the first time, an international legal instrument acknowledges that "the problems of ocean space are closely interrelated and need to be considered as a whole". Accordingly, in 320 articles and 9 annexes, the treaty provides the international legal framework for exercising the rights and duties of States relating to their uses of ocean space and its resources. After substantially amending the part dealing with the deep seabed area and its resources by the Agreement of 28 July 1994, the Convention entered into force on 16 November 1994 for those States which deposited instruments of ratification. It is now strongly supported by a significant majority of the States of the world, including major maritime powers, developing states, and others. The Convention codifies and develops customary international law as well as creating new rules and institutions. In some respects, the Convention provides specific rules and, in other respects, more general rules, whose precise meaning will evolve through practice. The Convention provides at minimum a framework for all uses of the sea. It envisages other international agreements, bilateral and multilateral, to elaborate its implementation. In spite of the breadth of the subject matter, the practice of States generally conforms to the law of the sea embodied in the Convention. The international community rightly feels proud of its achievement. But international law (and the law of the sea in particular) is a reflection of the needs of States during a certain period in history and their expectations of the future. This Convention does not necessarily contain the answers to all the challenges awaiting humankind in the 21st century, but it provides a sound framework for addressing them. Before examining in depth the issues relating to the delimitation of the outer limit of the continental shelf, a brief review of the major features of the Convention is appropriate. In the aftermath of World War II and soon after the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the new world organization requested its International Law Commission to consider the codification of existing customary international law relating to the oceans.
Historic Rights in African State Practice
