Making or Breaking the International Law of Transit Passage? Meeting Environmental and Safety Challenges in the Torres Strait with Compulsory Pilotage
Straits Used in International Navigation: Is International Law Meeting the Challenge? (Brill, 2013 Forthcoming)
36 Pages Posted: 15 Sep 2011 Last revised: 13 Nov 2015
Date Written: September 14, 2011
Abstract
In this presentation at the Symposium on “Safety, Security and Environmental Protection in Straits Used in International Navigation: Is International Law Meeting the Challenge?” (Istanbul, Turkey, September 9-11, 2011), I suggest that the practice of states in the Torres Strait seems to point to a developing local or special custom of compulsory pilotage (even accepting that there may be persistent objectors). Similarly, for parties to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the practice of compulsory pilotage may be having influence on the meaning of transit passage through the Torres Strait – and I maintain only through the Torres – under Part III of UNCLOS.
Keywords: Law of the Sea, Transit Passage, pilotage, Torres Strait
JEL Classification: K33, K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation