Preface

This work is intended as a practical guide for the parliamentary drafter or legislator faced with the task of transposing the obligations of two significant fisheries agreements into national law: the 1993 Agreement to Promote Compliance with International Conservation and Management Measures by Fishing Vessels on the High Seas, and the 1995 Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks. These two agreements will be referred to as the "Compliance Agreement" and the "Fish Stocks Agreement," respectively. Both agreements derive their significance from the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention, but each, in different but equally novel ways, develops the 1982 regime.

Although both agreements have attracted a great deal of attention, at the time of this writing the number of parties to each remains relatively small and neither agreement has yet entered into force. There are obviously a large number of reasons for this, but informal discussions suggest that for some states, particularly smaller ones, the task of transposing the complex provisions of these agreements into their national law is itself an obstacle to, or a delaying factor in, ratification or acceptance. It is hoped that this Guide will be of some assistance in that regard.

The development of this Guide posed a number of challenges for us. It is not intended as a comprehensive assessment of all the implementing legislation passed to date; indeed it does not address all the minutiae of...