Tag: United kingdom

Argentina and the United Kingdom both claim sovereignty over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and assert a variety of overlapping maritime claims appertaining to these South Atlantic features. Several features currently occupied and administered by the United Kingdom and were the focus of an armed conflict between the two States in 1982. In the immediate aftermath of the conflict the United Kingdom declared a 150 nautical mile ‘Falkland Island Protection Zone’ (FIPZ) designed to restrict and control the navigation of Argentinean vessels in waters surrounding the Islands. In 1986 the United Kingdom supplemented its 3 nautical mile territorial sea claim around the Falkland Islands by (1) declaring an ‘Interim Conservation and Management Zone’ (FICZ) projected 150 nautical miles from a fixed point located in the center of the Islands, and (2) reiterating its claim to the continental shelf surrounding the Islands.The limits of the FIPZ and FICZ are illustrated in Figure. The primary concern influencing the declaration of the FICZ was the rapid and unsustainable escalation of commercial fishing in waters surrounding the Islands between 1982 and 1986. The declaration of the FICZ and reiterated continental shelf claim prompted Argentina to issue a protest note reaffirming its sovereignty claim to the Islands and ‘its rights of sovereignty and jurisdiction over the surrounding maritime waters, sea-bed and marine sub-soil, rights which it will continue to exercise in its capacity as a coastal State in accordance with international law.’ In 1989 both States entered into negotiations with a view to normalizing diplomatic relations after they were broken off during the 1982 conflict. Design features of provisional joint management frameworks: