The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
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The framework convention for ocean governance, adopted in 1982 and in force from 1994, which carries the modern law on submarine cables in a small group of articles. It affirms the freedom to lay submarine cables and pipelines on the high seas and on the continental shelf, subject to conditions; it requires every state to make it a punishable offence for ships or persons under its jurisdiction to break or injure a cable beneath the high seas wilfully or through culpable negligence — Article 113 — and it extends that to conduct calculated or likely to cause such damage, which is a strengthening of the 1884 formula; and it provides for indemnity where a vessel sacrifices gear to avoid damaging a cable. What it does not do is as important. It gives no protection regime for cables inside a coastal state's territorial sea beyond that state's own law; it provides no mechanism for the rapid authorisation of repairs; and enforcement depends entirely on the flag state or on a state that can establish jurisdiction, which in practice has meant that most cable damage has never been prosecuted anywhere. The prosecutions of the mid-2020s in Finland and Taiwan are notable precisely because they are exceptions.
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Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 15 blocks · 1 evidence · 12 related
- Story
- The framework convention for ocean governance, adopted in 1982 and in force from 1994, which carries the modern law on submarine cables in a small group of articles. It affirms the freedom to lay submarine cables and pipelines on the high seas and on the continental shelf, subject to conditions; it requires every state to make it a punishable offence for ships or persons under its jurisdiction to break or injure a cable beneath the high seas wilfully or through culpable negligence — Article 113 — and it extends that to conduct calculated or likely to cause such damage, which is a strengthening of the 1884 formula; and it provides for indemnity where a vessel sacrifices gear to avoid damaging a cable. What it does not do is as important. It gives no protection regime for cables inside a coastal state's territorial sea beyond that state's own law; it provides no mechanism for the rapid authorisation of repairs; and enforcement depends entirely on the flag state or on a state that can establish jurisdiction, which in practice has meant that most cable damage has never been prosecuted anywhere. The prosecutions of the mid-2020s in Finland and Taiwan are notable precisely because they are exceptions.
- Knowledge
- The Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables
- The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
- Connections
- Locating and repairing a cable fault
- The Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables
- Cables and a power link are damaged in the Baltic Sea
- A ship's captain is convicted for severing a cable
- The submarine fibre-optic cable
- The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
- The Paris convention on submarine cables is signed
- Evidence
- Supports this pack's account of UNCLOS Article 113 — the obligation on every state to make wilful or culpably negligent breaking of a high-seas cable a punishable offence, extended to conduct calculated or likely to cause such damage, which strengthens the 1884 formula. V55 verification basis: retrieved in summary, not opened; noaa.gov is among the domains V55 measured as blocked. Article 113 is paraphrased and not quoted, and the pack's characterisation of enforcement gaps comes from legal commentary rather than from this page.
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/atlas?object=TREATY_UNCLOS_1982&experience=TREATY_UNCLOS_1982