Archipelagic state

An archipelagic state is an island country that consists of one or more archipelago. The designation is legally defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 (UNCLOS III).^[1] The Bahamas, Fiji, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines are the five original sovereign states that obtained approval in the UNCLOS signed in Montego Bay, Jamaica on 10 December 1982 and qualified as the archipelagic states.^[2][3]

An archipelagic state can designate the waters between the islands as sovereign archipelagic waters.

As of 20 June 2015, a total of 22 sovereign states have sought to claim archipelagic status.^[4] Few countries comprise an archipelago in a geographical sense, but chose not to claim the archipelagic state status, including Japan, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Cuba, and Iceland.^[5]

Archipelagic waters

An example of archipelagic waters claim using underwater features as "land" (Seychelles "Group 2")

Archipelagic states are composed of groups of islands that form a state as a single unit, the islands and the waters within the baselines as internal waters (archipelagic waters). Under this concept ("archipelagic doctrine"), an archipelago shall be regarded as a single unit, so that the waters around, between, and connecting the islands of the archipelago, irrespective of their breadth and dimensions, are subject to its exclusive sovereignty (while allowing ships from other countries to exercise the archipelagic sea lanes passage or innocent passage at their choice).^[6] The baselines must enclose the main islands of the archipelago and the enclosed water to land ratio must be "between 1:1 and 9:1".^[7] The lower end of this ratio was chosen to exclude states with a lot of land, like Japan, while the higher end prevents a group of highly scattered islands from putting claims on a very large body of water. The ratio was proposed during UNCLOS negotiations by the Bahamas in order to include all five original archipelagic states.^[8] Low-tide elevations can be used for baselines, provided that they have lighthouses built on them, or lie within the territorial water of an actual island.^[9]

The exact status of archipelagic waters is subject to interpretation. For example, both the Philippines and Indonesia consider their archipelagic waters to be more sovereign that the territorial waters and closer to the internal waters.^[10]

The approval of the United Nations (UN) for the five sovereign states as archipelagic states respects existing agreements with other countries and shall recognize traditional fishing rights and other legitimate activities of the immediately adjacent neighboring countries in certain areas falling within archipelagic waters.^[11] The terms and conditions for the exercise of such rights and activities, including the nature, the extent and the areas to which they apply, shall, at the request of any of the countries concerned, be regulated by bilateral agreements between them. Such rights shall not be transferred to or shared with third countries or their nationals.^[12]

Archipelagic sea lanes passage

The regime of archipelagic sea lanes passage (ASLP) is specific to archipelagic waters and is similar to the transit passage for the international straits: both ships and aircraft can use the archipelagic waters, the right of passage is non-suspensible, submarines can navigate while submerged, etc. Article 54 in particular explicitly incorporates Articles 39, 30, 42, and 44 (that cover the transit passage) into ASLP. The main difference between the transit passage and ASLP is that in case of ASLP the ship can opt instead for an innocent passage, while the transit passage provides no such alternative. Both transit passage and ASLP regimes, with the ability to launch and receive aircraft, perform maneuvers and navigate underwater, are primarily designed for warships.^[13]

An archipelagic state can designate sea lanes and air routes that will be subject of ASLP and "include all normal routes used [...] for international navigation or overflight". If the state does not do so, the default sea lanes will correspond to "the routes normally used for international navigation". Ships should not deviate more than 25 miles off the designated lanes.^[6]

History

Discussions about the status of waters between the islands of an archipelago date back to 1924, when Alejandro Alvarez proposed grouping the islands together when considering the limits of territorial waters.^[14]

The concept of an archipelagic state became a matter of consideration when the potential beneficiaries (Bahamas, Fiji, Indonesia, Philippines) gained independence post-World War II. In the absence of international law, the claims of these states to the waters between the islands were based on internal laws (Indonesia) or interpretation of treaties (the 1898 Treaty of Paris for Philippines).^[1] At the same time, the economic activity involving the sea resources grew in importance, prompting, for example, the 1945 Truman Proclamation by the United States, 1955 and 1956 notes verbales of the Philippines, and the 1957 Djuanda Declaration by Indonesia.^[15][14]

After an early attempt to define archipelagic waters as territorial waters by the League of Nations at the 1930 Hague Conference on Codification failed, the efforts restarted in 1952 with the International Law Commission (ILC) proposing a definition of an archipelago as three or more islands in the mid-ocean separated by no more than 10 miles, with the body of water in between being internal waters. The proposal was objected to by the maritime states. The 1958 UNCLOS I established the rule of straight baselines that settled the issue for the islands of mainland countries, but not for the mid-ocean archipelagoes.^[16] UNCLOS III finally settled the issue prompted by a proposal submitted by Fuji, Indonesia, Mauritius, and the Philippines. The codification comprises nine articles of the Part IV of the UNCLOS.^[17]

List of archipelagic states

This is a list of the current archipelagic states in the world. These 22 island countries have sought to claim archipelagic status by utilising the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provisions.^[4][18]

Bolded are the five original official archipelagic states.

State	Geographical configuration[4]	Geological type[19]	Population	Area (km2)[20]	Population density (per km2)	Geographical location
Antigua and Barbuda	One archipelago with two main islands	Oceanic	97,118	440	194	Caribbean Sea Leeward Islands
Bahamas	One archipelago		392,000	13,878	23.27	North Atlantic Ocean Lucayan Archipelago
Cape Verde			518,467	4,033	125.5	North Atlantic Ocean Macaronesia
Comoros			784,745	2,235	275	Indian Ocean Comoro Islands
Dominican Republic[21]	One archipelago with the main island (Hispaniola) shared with another country (Haiti)	Continental	10,652,000	48,442	208.2	Caribbean Sea Greater Antilles
Fiji	One archipelago with two main islands	Various[note 1]	859,178	18,274	46.4	South Pacific Ocean Melanesia
Grenada[note 2]	One archipelago with two main islands	Oceanic	110,000	344	319.8	Caribbean Sea Windward Islands
Indonesia	One archipelago with four islands (Borneo, Sebatik, New Guinea, and Timor) shared with four other countries (Brunei, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste).	Various[note 3]	270,203,917	1,904,569	124.7	World Ocean Maritime Southeast Asia
Jamaica	One archipelago with one main island		2,847,232	10,991	252	Caribbean Sea Greater Antilles
Kiribati	Three archipelagos	Oceanic	123,346	811	152	Pacific Ocean Micronesia
Maldives	One archipelago		329,198	298	1,105	Indian Ocean Maldive Islands
Marshall Islands	Two archipelagos		62,000	181	342.5	North Pacific Ocean Micronesia
Mauritius	Two archipelagos[clarification needed] with two main islands		1,244,663	2,040	610	Indian Ocean Mascarene Islands
Papua New Guinea	One archipelago with the main island (New Guinea) shared with another country (Indonesia)	Continental shelf	6,732,000	462,840	14.5	South Pacific Ocean Melanesia
Philippines	One archipelago		101,398,120	300,000	295	North Pacific Ocean Maritime Southeast Asia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	One archipelago with one main island		120,000	389	307	Caribbean Sea Windward Islands
São Tomé and Príncipe	One archipelago with two main islands		163,000	1,001	169.1	Atlantic Ocean Cameroon Line
Seychelles	Four archipelagos	Oceanic	87,500	455	192	Indian Ocean Seychelles Islands
Solomon Islands	Five archipelagos		523,000	28,400	18.1	South Pacific Ocean Melanesia
Trinidad and Tobago	One archipelago with two main islands	Continental shelf	1,299,953	5,131	254.4	Caribbean Sea Lesser Antilles
Tuvalu	One archipelago	Oceanic	12,373	26	475.88	South Pacific Ocean Polynesia
Vanuatu	One archipelago		243,304	12,190	19.7	South Pacific Ocean Melanesia

See also

• Politics portal
• Islands portal

• List of archipelagos
• List of island countries
• Lists of islands
• Thalassocracy

Notes

1. Viti Levu is continental while some small offshore islands are oceanic.
2. Including Carriacou and Petite Martinique.
3. The geology of Indonesia is very complex, as the country is located at a meeting point of several tectonic plates. Indonesia is located between two continental plates: Australian Plate (Sahul Shelf) and the Eurasian Plate (Sunda Shelf); and between two oceanic plates: the Pacific Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate.

References

1. Oegroseno 2014, p. 125.
2. "Preamble to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: Article 46 – Use of Terms". United Nations. May 13, 2013.
3. "United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982". United Nations. May 13, 2013.
4. Archipelagic States Practice
5. Oegroseno 2014, p. 129.
6. Priestnall 1997, p. 6.
7. "Semaphore: April 2005". www.navy.gov.au. Royal Australian Navy. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
8. Oegroseno 2014, pp. 129–130.
9. Oegroseno 2014, p. 131.
10. Priestnall 1997, p. 9.
11. Oegroseno 2014, p. 133.
12. "PART IV ARCHIPELAGIC STATES: Article 51 – Existing agreements, traditional fishing rights and existing submarine cables". United Nations. May 13, 2013.
13. Priestnall 1997, pp. 6–7.
14. Priestnall 1997, p. 4.
15. Oegroseno 2014, p. 126.
16. Oegroseno 2014, pp. 127–128.
17. Oegroseno 2014, pp. 128–129.
18. The Law of the Sea — Practice of Archipelagic States
19. "United Nations Environment Programme – Island Directory". Archived from the original on 2008-02-14. Retrieved 2021-10-24.
20. "Island Countries Of The World". WorldAtlas.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-07. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
21. Analysis on the legitimacy of the Declaration of the Dominican Republic as an Archipelagic State and its legality under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the international law

Sources

• Priestnall, Graham (1997). "The Regimes of Archipelagic Sea Lanes Passage and Straits' Transit Passage – Similarities and Differences". Maritime Studies. 1997 (96): 1–12. doi:10.1080/07266472.1997.10878494. ISSN 0726-6472.
• Oegroseno, Arif Havas (2014-10-30). "Archipelagic States: From Concept to Law". The IMLI Manual on International Maritime Law. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/law/9780199683925.003.0005. ISBN 978-0-19-968392-5.