INTERNATIONAL LAW

TERRITORY OF STATES

Concept of Territory

Territory in international law means any area of the earth’s surface

which is the subject of sovereign rights and interests.

Territory is one of the fundamental attributes of a State. The exercise of

sovereignty is predicated upon territory.

Definition of Territory

The territory of the State includes not only the land over which its
jurisdiction extends, but also the rivers, lakes, bays and the air spare above
it. The domain of a State therefore may be described as terrestrial, fluvial, or
maritime, and aerial.

Article I of the 1987 Philippine Constitution provides:

Section 1. The national territory comprises the Philippine archipelago,

with all the islands and water embraced therein, and all other territories over
which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction, consisting of its
terrestial, fluvial, and earial domains, including its territorial sea, the seabed,
the subsoil, the insular shelves, and other submarine areas. The waters
around between, and connecting the islands of the archipelago regardless of
their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the
Philippines.

South China Sea Territorial Claims

Surrounded by ten littoral states, namely: the People’s Republic of

China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore,
Thailand, Kampuchea, and Vietnam, the South China Sea is a semi-enclosed
sea, with a total area of 1.7 million square nautical miles. The South China
Sea proper, however, which is the main subject of the dispute is about
959,160 square nautical miles with hundreds of scattered tiny islands,
shoals, rocks, cays, banks and reefs constituting four archipelagoes, namely:
the Pratas Macclesfield Bank, Paracels and Spratlys. Largely undeveloped,
the South China Sea provides with strategically important routes for
navigation. It may also provide living and non-living marine resources to

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whoever owns the islands. The Paracels, a group of islands on the south-east
of China are claimed by China and Vietnam.

Some one hundred miles to the south of the Paracels are a group of
islands called the Spratlys. Some of these islands are occupied by the
Philippines, Vietnam, China and Taiwan claim all the islands. Lately
Malaysia and Brunei lay claim to some islands.

Recently, China claimed that all the islands, reefs, rocks and shoals
belong to China causing disputes with the Philippines over the 53-island
Kalayaan Group.

The Kalayaan Island Group

By virtue of occupation and exercise of jurisdiction the Philippines

formally claimed under Presidential Decree No. 1596 on 11 June 1978 title
to the Kalayaan Island Group. According to the Decree, the 53-island group
which is not part of the Spratlys, located about 227 miles kilometers West of
Palawan, Philippines, did not belong to any State. By reason of history,
indispensable need and effective occupation and control in accordance with
international law the K.I.G. is subject to the sovereignty of the Philippines.

The Philippine claim was duly registered in the United Nations

Secretariat on 20 May 1980 including the technical description of the
boundaries.

The Arctic claims

The Arctic is also a subject of a dispute over the claims of Canada and
the U.S.S.R. on the theory or contiguity. Norway and Denmark have claims
to land formations. Under the Arctic Sector Theory, a State whose territory
lies close to the Arctic claims all land found between a line extending from
its eastern extremity to the north Pole, and another line extending from its
western extremity to the Pole.

National Air Space

The International Convention of Civil Aviation, also called the Chicago

Convention, established the principle that every contracting party has
complete and exclusive sovereignty over the air space above its territory.

Five Freedoms of Air Transportation

(1) to fly across the territory without landing;

(2) to land for non-traffic purposes;

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 (3) to put down passengers, mail, and cargo on the territory of the State
whose nationality the aircraft possesses;
(4) to take on passengers, mail and cargo destined for the territory of any
other contracting State and
(5) to put down passengers, mail, and cargo coming from any such
territory.

Outer Space Law

Proceeding by analogy to the law of the sea, some writers suggest the
drawing of lines to determine the extent of the sovereignty of a State in outer
spare. One view is that a State should exercise full sovereignty up to a height
to which aircraft can ascend. An area up to 300 miles should be designated
as a contiguous zone, and the right of transit through this zone for all non-
military flight should be allowed. The area beyond this space, or outer spare,
should be free for all.

On January 13, 1958, the United Nations General Assembly created and
ad hoc Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. In 1961, the
General Assembly adopted a Resolution on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space,
which declared that international law, including the Charter of the United
Nations, applied to Outer space as well as to celestial bodies, and that both
such space and such bodies were regarded as free for exploration and use by
all States.

On December 19, 1966 the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities

of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space including the Moon and
Other Celestial Bodies was approved unanimously by the General
Assembly. The Treaty was signed by sixty States on January 27, 1967 and
eventually came into force on October 10, 1976.

Some of the basic principles of the treaty are: 1) the exploration and use
of outerspace, including the moon and celestial bodies, shall be carried out
for the benefit and in the interest of all countries and shall be the province of
all mankind; 2) the outer space including the moon and other celestial bodies
shall be free for exploitation and use by all states; 3) it is not subject to
national appropriation by claim of sovereignty; 4) all activities should be in
accordance with international law and the UN charter; 5) the moon and the
celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes; 6) all
astronauts are regarded as envoys of mankind; 7) the State Party that
launched an object in the outer space is internationally liable for any damage
caused to another State Party.

Moon Treaty

The agreement governing the activities of states on the moon and other
celestial bodies approved in 1979, provides that all activities on the moon

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are to be carried out in the interest of other states. The moon is demilitarized
on nuclear weapons or other means of destruction should not be deposit in it.

The Territorial Sea

On grounds of security and defense, States, since time immemorial, have

claimed an area of the sea beyond the low watermark, which is called the
maritime belt or territorial sea.

12-Mile Territorial Sea

The UN Convention had settled the problem of the breadth of the

territorial sea, by providing that it should not exceed 12 nautical miles
measured from the baselines.

Opinions of Jurists

1. An archipelagic State, whose component islands and other natural

features form an intrinsic, economic and political entity, and historically
have or may have been regarded as such, may draw straight baselines
connecting the outermost points of the outermost islands and drying reefs of
the archipelago from which the extent of the territorial sea of the
archipelagic State is or may be deter-mined.

Analysis of the Archipelagic Provisions of the Convention

The basic principle of the archipelagic doctrine is that all waters within
the archipelagic baselines are internal waters, and are part and parcel of the
national territory. The Convention designates them as “archipelagic waters.”
The regime over these archipelagic waters is restricted, particularly with
respect to transmit of foreign vessels.

The Continental Shelf

As now defined in the Convention on the Law of the Sea, “the

continental shelf of a coastal State comprises the Seabed and subsoil of the
submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural
prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of the continental margin,
or to a distance of 200 miles from the baselines from which the territorial sea
is measured where the outer edge of the continental margin does not extend
up to that distance.

The outer limits of the continental shelf shall not exceed 350 miles from
the baselines from which the territorial sea is measured except those with

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submarine elevations that are natural components of the continental margin,
such as plateus, rises, caps, banks and spurs. The coastal State shall delineate
the outer limits of its continental shelf, where that shelf extends beyond 200
nautical miles from the baselines by straight lines not exceeding 60 nautical
miles in length, connecting fixed points, defined by coordinates of latitude
and longitude.

The coastal State exercises sovereign rights over the continental shelf for
the purpose of exploring and exploiting its natural resources.