The four 1958 Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea, which codi?ed and progressively developed this sector of our legislation, were rather ephemeral despite the fact that they were constituent Conventions. In fact, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) again undertook the same task with the same spirit 20 years later after a long drawn out global negotiation process in which all the marine areas and problems pending were analysed and discussed by the countries attending, and an apparently strengthened majority was attained, including the essential agreement...