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ASEAN, UNCLOS and the birth of a new legal order
Another aspect that is crucial to the development of international law is the third-party dispute settlement mechanism.
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Floral attraction: The Jakarta-based ASEAN Secretariat takes part in the Tomohon International Flower Festival (TIFF) 2017 in Tomohon, North Sulawesi, on Tuesday. The annual event aims to attract more tourists to the region and improve the local economy. (JP/Eva Aruperes)
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n Oct. 14, the Padjadjaran University in Bandung conferred its annual Mochtar Kusumaatmadja Award to Ambassador Tommy Koh of Singapore, the president of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea from 1980 to 1982, to acknowledge his valuable contribution to the development of international law and pivotal role in the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which recognizes the concept of an archipelagic state.
This recognition capped Indonesia’s 25 years of diplomacy, which began with the Djuanda Declaration in December 1957. The Djuanda Declaration itself was the result of a study conducted by Mochtar, who was Indonesian foreign minister in 1978-1988.
The philosophy of tanah air (homeland), land and water as a single united entity that cannot be separated from one another, coupled with security threats, forced Indonesia to come up with a new concept that would establish, in the words of Ambassador Koh, a new legal order.
Mochtar then proposed a concept that would allow Indonesia to draw baselines connecting the outermost points of its outermost islands. He drew the analogy from the 1951 Judgment of the International Court of Justice on the Anglo-Norwegian fisheries case. Then, the court declared that Norway’s drawing of straight baselines along its fringing islands and the skjaergaard (rock rampart) did not contradict international law.
