Among the Ramon Magsaysay award winners this year was Tommy Koh. Born in 1937 and educated as a lawyer and a legal scholar, Mr. Koh chaired a pivotal negotiating committee of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. The award citation lauds him for “bridging a fundamental divide over seabed mining between wealthy and developing, capitalist and non-capitalist, maritime and landlocked nations”. In 1982, as president of the entire conference, Mr. Koh led more than 150 nations to adopt the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which has been in the news because of many disputes that have arisen including the Strait of Hormuz.
What do you think the award, especially the recognition of your role in UNCLOS, signifies?
It is an endorsement of my work to build a world governed by law and not by force.
You took over the presidency of UNCLOS III in 1980, inheriting nearly a decade of negotiation. What were the hardest compromises you had to broker in the final years before the 1982 signing?
The biggest challenge was the Reagan Administration’s radical demands on seabed mining which were rejected by the developing countries. [U.S. President Ronald Reagan changed the stance of the U.S. taken during the Jimmy Carter era. He objected to UNCLOS Part XI’s treatment of the deep seabed as the “common heritage of mankind” that he saw as going against free-enterprise and private-property norms.]
The U.S. never ratified the Convention despite the 1994 Part XI fix. Many other nations such as Iran haven’t either. Is there a case for UNCLOS IV so all nations are onboard?
We have 172 countries which are parties to UNCLOS. This is near universal. Even though the U.S. is not a party it regards UNCLOS as the authoritative law of the sea.
Do you think the Malacca-Singapore straits are a model for resolving the Strait of Hormuz? Or do you think status quo before the war is the best solution for the world, if not for Iran?
The priority is to end the war. Before the war there was no trouble in the Strait of Hormuz.
Do the Malacca-Singapore straits provide transit rights to warships and submarines? Iran seems to be very keen on not allowing that.
Iran is not a party to UNCLOS. However, the regime of transit passage has become part of customary international law and is binding on Iran.
Given current EEZ (exclusive economic zone) and seabed disputes — South China Sea, Indian Ocean boundary questions — do you think UNCLOS’s core architecture is holding up?
It is still the “constitution” of the world’s ocean.
Countries dub some ships as dark fleet and take punitive, material action against them including in the high seas. Do you agree with that?
This is a big problem for the International Maritime Organization (IMO). It is at the IMO that we should try to tackle this problem.
How has the dispute resolution mechanism worked?
Unlike other treaties under UNCLOS, states parties are bound by a system of compulsory dispute settlement. It has, in my view, worked very well.
