The Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables

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The first international instrument written to protect submarine cables, signed at Paris on 14 March 1884 and in force from 1 May 1888. Its provisions are recognisably the ones still in use: breaking or injuring a cable wilfully or by culpable negligence is to be a punishable offence in the law of each party; vessels laying or repairing cables are to display distinguishing signals and other vessels are to keep clear of them; fishing gear is to be kept at a stated distance; and a ship that sacrifices an anchor or gear to avoid damaging a cable is to be indemnified by the cable owner. It renews itself automatically unless denounced, which is why a convention written for the telegraph is still in force — reported as binding on 36 states parties — for an industry that now carries almost all of the world's data. Two things are worth noticing about it. It is a criminal-law harmonisation treaty, not a protection regime: it obliges states to legislate, and leaves enforcement to them. And it was drafted at a moment when cables were, uncontroversially, civilian infrastructure of shared interest — an assumption that the deliberate-damage incidents of the 2020s have made contentious again.

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