Convention on the Continental Shelf

Convention on the Continental Shelf
Signed29 April 1958
LocationGeneva, Switzerland
Effective10 June 1964
Signatories43
Parties58
LanguagesChinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish
Full text
Convention on the Continental Shelf at Wikisource
legal.un.org/
  The global continental shelf, highlighted in cyan

The Convention on the Continental Shelf was an international treaty created to codify the rules of international law relating to continental shelves. The treaty, after entering into force 10 June 1964, established the rights of a sovereign state over the continental shelf surrounding it, if there be any. The treaty was one of three agreed upon at the first United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS I).[1] It has since been superseded by a new agreement reached in 1982 at UNCLOS III.

The treaty dealt with seven topics: the regime governing the superjacent waters and airspace; laying or maintenance of submarine cables or pipelines; the regime governing navigation, fishing, scientific research and the coastal state's competence in these areas; delimitation; tunneling.[2]

  1. ^ United Nations (29 April 1958). "Convention on the Continental Shelf" (PDF). legal.un.org. International Law Commission. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2022. Retrieved 22 September 2022.
  2. ^ Dupuy, René Jean; Daniel Vignes (1991). A Handbook on the New Law of the Sea. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 328. ISBN 978-0-7923-0924-6.