Le fond des mers - patrimoine commun de l'humanité

On August 18th, 1967, H.M. Arvid Pardo, Malta's delegate at the UN, referred to the General Assembly with the question entitled: "Examination of the question of the reservation exclusively for peaceful purposes of the sea-bed and the ocean floor, and the subsoil thereof, underlying the high seas beyond the limits of present national jurisdiction, and the use of their resources in the interests of mankind." (1) This proposal was not the result of pure abstract thinking, but was, on the contrary, the wording of the necessity to adapt marine legislation to the current development state of the international society. However, this evolutive perspective does not exist only economically and technically speaking: it develops in the political field, especially in the development of the nations claim over marine spaces and the genesis of the principle of freedom of high seas. As in any dialectical perspective, legislation interferes with these de facto situations and imposes a number of directions to the study of a legal regime responding to the needs of a changing international society.