#Law and Treaties

[justaz]

i prefer happy ending bbc merlin where morgana becomes court sorceress and arthur becomes king and merlin remains as his servant (until they eventually marry) and lancelot lives and he and gwen marry but that damn game of thrones (?? probably idk) audio on tiktok that goes “i mean to fight this war and win it.” “good. to war then.” keeps giving me visions of king arthur of camelot on the verge of war with other kingdoms and his powerful court sorcerer merlin standing by his throne. arthur declares that he wishes to go to war and merlin (eager to bring about the united albion the prophecies speak of) supports arthur immediately and declares they’re going to war

[gingermintpepper]

One of my favourite little things about Apollo is how casual his and the Fates' relationship was.

Now, this isn't to understate how grave the Fates were in any way, as a matter of fact, it's written multiple times about the complex interplay between the Fates and Zeus (Stobaeus even wrote that the Fates were given the seat closest to Zeus' throne so he could better give counsel on all things from their machinations)

Indeed, even Zeus was beholden to them and even though the Fates usually left things up to natural course (and Zeus in his position as Moiragetes - that is, the Leader of Fates could even intercede on these events, even interrupting when a someone was set to die) in a lot of ways, there are many, many things that even Zeus could never interfere with, things that were above even the King of the Heavens. Some really good examples are things like Persephone's Abduction which the Fates ruled as necessary for the propagation of the seasons and his marriages to Themis and Hera.

By all accounts really, the Fates were incredibly stern, incredibly grave deities who presided over law, order, birth and death and even worked with the Furies to punish those who broke the sacred laws!

And then you have Apollo who was also known by the title Moiragetes (In Delphi, there were only two Moirai depicted and in place of the third was Zeus and Apollo Moiragetes according to Pausanias) but who did things like, checks notes, send the Fates to be the midwives of his paramour Evadne when she had to deliver his son alone in secret (by the way, he also sent the actual goddess of childbirth to help. The Fates absolutely did not need to also be there, he was taking every precaution:

and get the Fates drunk so they would agree to save his bestie Admetus' life:

Keep in mind btw - this con Apollo pulled for Admetus was multi-layered and even included getting Heracles to wrestle Thanatos and keep him still so Apollo could proceed to help Admetus cheat Alcestis away from Fates when Admetus expressed regret for making his wife die in his place:

And I cannot stress enough that Apollo faced zero consequences for this nonsense. NONE. The Fates weren't even cordial with other Gods - they're almost never referred to directly, they were often depicted apart from other deities or described as old, ugly and unable to walk (though, generally speaking they were artistically depicted as young maidens!) and apart from comforting Demeter by going to personally explain what happened to Persephone in some versions of the story, they didn't really get humanised the way most of the other gods or spirits did. Usually they're referred to euphemistically, or someone will speak distantly about a prophecy they once heard was designed by the Fates but Apollo? Apollo knew the Fates! He was good friends with the Fates! And I think it's even cooler when you consider that both instances of Apollo showing off his Fate's Favourite privilege have to deal with birth (of Iamus) and death (of Alcestis/Admetus) which were the two points most deeply associated with the Moirai and why there were usually depictions of them as a pair over that of a triad.

(Excerpts sourced from Theoi, Aeschylus' Eumenides, Pindar's Olympian 6 and Statius' Silvae; though just a note, one instance of the Fates' involvement with Apollo is misquoted on Theoi - that is the Fates being present for Apollo's birth, that's actually a misinterpretation of Evadne's birthing of Iamus.)

[bonefall]

the "strange place" could be a private wildlife collector? i know the buying and selling of wild animals as pets can be pretty bad in the uk (or at least it is w/ birds of prey? that's abt what i know)

OH that's a good idea, that's going to be one of my top choices for if I DO end up needing to change the "twoleg den" in the upcoming super edition. Private wildlife collectors are a HUGE problem because the laws on simply owning exotic animals (as long as they're not covered by the Dangerous Wild Animals Act) are suuuuper lax in the UK, and the Zoo Licensing Act only applies if you accept general admission.

(and even then, specifically, you can take admission a limited amount of times a year. James Wellington's Animal Welfare Nightmare Extravaganza, beloved winter tradition, £25 each, kiddies of edible height get in free)

Birds in particular are a huuuge issue because there's big oversights in the laws surrounding the keeping of birds of prey. You don't actually need a license to own any birds except ostriches and cassowaries, or one of the five destructive invasive birds. Your pet eagle just needs to be registered so they know you didn't snatch it from the wild. Licenses will only apply if you're breeding, selling, or using it for falconry.

Maybe I could even tie this hypothetical antagonist guy to Sharptooth/One Eye/The God of Summer's previous human incarnation, on some off-chance the series ends up using this villain again. That could be kinda neat.

[occvltswim]

‎Prophet Noble Drew Ali ‎ﷺ ‎ (1886-1929) — Founder of the Moorish Divine & National Movement 🇲🇦

[the80hbee]

If a Ranger dies while their still-in-training apprentice survives, then that apprentice carries their Oakleaf until graduation around their wrist. When they graduate, they have a choice between getting their own Oakleaf or inheriting their Mentors.

No apprentice has ever chosen a new Oakleaf for themselves.

@brilliantinsultsgalore ‘s hc ^ (from a post of rangerthursday’s) has spawned this devastating idea in my head.

imagine an au where halt dies for will somewhere in the whole skandia plotline. and will does this. gilan taking will aside on the docks as crowley stood, frozen, unable to comprehend that halt was dead and gone, and tying the leather cord with shaking hands around will’s thin wrist. tears sliding down both their faces.

gilan probably took will on as his apprentice. their mentor-apprentice relationship was a little unique for its near-equal, older brother-younger brother dynamic — and part of that was very intentionally done by gilan because he wanted will to be sure that he wouldn’t ever try to take the place of halt in will’s life, but also partially because gilan was unsure of himself and felt he couldn’t teach will as well as halt would have.

crowley was hesitant at first to let gilan take will on since gilan was pretty inexperienced and rather young for an apprentice. but gilan was the one who welcomed will back from skandia and cared for him 24/7 through that initial week back filled with a constant onslaught of night terrors and flashbacks and panic attacks. not that they stopped then, but the healer they were working with had suggested they try going back to a gentler training schedule to put some normalcy and structure into will’s life. and when will had said that he really, really didn’t want to be apprenticed to anyone besides gilan, gilan had been determined to move heaven and earth to make it happen. so crowley resigned himself to the fact that halt passed on his stubborn, fierce protectiveness to gilan (and was secretly warmed to see the strength of love and family created between the two apprentices of his, uh, his lifelong best friend), and let gilan take will on, so long as gilan regularly kept in touch with crowley and another nearby senior ranger (in a neighboring fief), in case gilan ever had any questions or wanted advice.

and after the first months of gilan being will’s mentor went amazingly well (within the context of will continuing to work through the trauma of skandia — halt’s death as well as all the canon things)), crowley moved the two of them back to redmont. because honestly, they both know the fief very well from their time with halt, and the duo were proving very capable. and not that crowley said it in his reasoning, but redmont was closer to araluen than meric fief, and this way crowley could visit them much easier.

at some point, will takes to rubbing at halt’s oakleaf on his wrist as a sort of comfort/nervous fidget, and some of the scuffing on its surface left by halt’s everyday wear starts to fade, polished away by time and will’s rough fingertips. will panics when he first realizes this because he feels like he’s erasing the evidence of halt from it, and gilan finds him on the edge of a panic attack one day, going back and forth between saying it’s a stupid worry then sobbing that he had failed halt — which was really about will’s survivor’s guilt, his deep fear that he hadn’t done enough and it was his fault, that he should have saved halt or halt shouldn’t have had to save him in the first place. gilan knows that deeper issue isn’t something he can solve right then, but he could sit with him and help will at least see that no matter how the oakleaf changed, it was and always would be halt’s oakleaf — and one day, also will’s, because there was never any doubt about that. and gilan and also is like. well maybe rub the back and edges more since most of the scratches and dings and stuff are on the front right? and will is like. oh. right. yes. (and then gilan jokingly affects a stern look, reminding will of what they’d just said about how, whatever he does, will is not erasing halt from the oakleaf either way — gilan’s way of gently and humorously making sure will got the point of their talk, which he did).

and later, halt’s oakleaf turns into a sort of anchor point of halt’s memory for will and he starts staring at it as he has the whole ‘hearing the voice of someone you know very well in your head randomly popping in to give you advice or respond to something’, and then also when he thinks ‘what would halt do?’. (though he often stares more at his wrist and sleeve since he keeps the oakleaf tucked away a fair amount of the time so it isn’t dangling about and getting in the way of everything he did). then will starts more directly engaging with his mental!halt and uses the oakleaf as a conduit for that, eventually sometimes even talking out loud to the pendant and lowkey processing a lot of his grief by talking to halt via the oakleaf.

gilan finds will doing this one day and will is rather horrified and embarrassed until gilan pulls back his sleeve and shows will a bronze oakleaf around his wrist — gilan’s old apprentice necklace. gilan quietly explains how he wears it as a tribute to his mentor and father-figure, as a way of saying halt will always be gilan’s mentor and gilan always his apprentice, to hold close his memories of him time spent with halt (much of it happening when it was that necklace around his neck), and as a way of taking halt with him wherever he goes. and gilan says the oakleaf has come to represent halt for him too and that, sometimes, he also talks to halt through it, holding the pendant in both his hands and closing his eyes. gilan then reaches and takes will’s hand to lead him back to the cabin. their clasped hands are the ones each chose to wear the oakleaf on (will’s right and gilan’s left), and the bronze and silver metal gently bump against each other with a light ting! as they walk back together.

will almost doesn’t make it through his own graduation. gilan and crowley decided to keep to just the three of them, guessing that will wouldn’t want to have to deal with a big party. it would be hard enough already with halt’s painfully obvious absence at what was one of the most important events in will’s life, one where halt should have been present more than anyone else. will is eternally grateful to them for it. he decides to celebrate with his friends with a night out a few days later, and it doesn’t hurt as badly then.

after his graduation, with the familiar weight of halt’s silver oakleaf now pressed over his heart, will’s wrist felt oddly bare and untethered, so at gilan’s suggestion, he also begins wearing his old apprentice oakleaf on his wrist.

crowley smiled when he saw this. all those years ago, pritchard had fashioned a rough sort of bronze oakleaf for halt at the one year mark of halt’s unofficial apprenticeship. one night after duncan et. al. had chased morgarath back to the mountains of rain and night post-hackham heath, crowley and halt were alone back at castle araluen and with a night to themselves. halt quietly told crowley the story behind that oakleaf and then gave it to crowley, telling him he wanted crowley to have it. and crowley gives halt his apprentice oakleaf in return. crowley saw gilan with his apprentice oakleaf tied around his wrist when gilan and will had stopped by castle araluen on the way to redmont from meric, and when they left, he took halt’s apprentice oakleaf from where he had kept it in a little box and tied it gently around his own wrist.

halt’s death changed them all, forever. crowley would never again love like he had loved halt with his entire being and then more. will would never feel the love of a father, see someone like his father as he had in halt. gilan would never again trust so wholly, in unfettered totality, like he had trusted halt.

but it would be okay.

on the first anniversary of halt’s death, crowley had ridden quietly to halt’s old cabin and spent the night with gilan and will. at first, they just sat together in silence, alone together around the crackling fire. then, crowley pulled back his sleeve, showed will and gilan the rough little oakleaf dangling there, and told them its story. they spent that night crying and laughing with each other in turn, telling stories about halt, remembering the mentor and father and love of a lif-uh, best friend, that he had been to them. and so, they found they had created their own little family in one other. they were gathered at the start by the almost magnetic quality of halt’s presence that drew them all in. they were bound together by their love for halt and their grief at his death. and now, they saw their love for each other was beginning to grow and fill in the cracks. in time, it would become enough to glue them back together into something new. not quite whole. not quite broken. but okay. loved.

family.

[belle--ofthebrawl]

Working at a new place that old friends work at is great because a new co worker will turn to you out of nowhere and go "so is that dead bird in your car or in the dumpster." After you take care of the previously mentioned dead bird.

[elicatkin]

It would really be interesting to see a list of all the times Westminster has broken the terms of the Treaty of Union.

[ragingadhd]

Will Treaty headcanons that are totally not just me projecting

Will is a very picky eater. Always has been, and probably always will be. His pallet definitely expands a lot as he gets older, but in all likelihood, it will always stay within the “picky” realm.

He smiles a lot in public without even realizing it half the time. It’s something he’s kind of insecure about since people have told him it’s weird, especially when he was younger. Nonetheless, he still does it.

His inner child is so fucked up and traumatized that he will completely and utterly devour any shred of happy nostalgia he can get his grubby little hands on

Will is the type of guy who will laugh at a joke before he gets the punchline

He’s a bit of a maladaptive daydreamer. This can be hard for him since it makes paying attention difficult, especially to things like reading/writing reports or maps. But, it’s also kind of beneficial because it helps him come up with creative solutions to strange and difficult problems.

He’s a very fidgety guy, especially when he’s nervous. His go-to stim is rubbing his oak leaf pendant, so it’s constantly constantly covered in fingerprints as a result.

He’s got raging insomnia. It was at its worst while he was a teenager and, thanks to Malcom’s remedies, he’s able to sleep pretty well as an adult. But, even with his 8 or so hours of sleep every night, it still seems like his body is still catching up on the sleep he missed as a teen.

He has some kind of super-human radar for animals. No one knows how he does it, but he’s somehow always aware of every animal (especially cats and dogs) within his vicinity.

His voice is actually pretty low, and even though he’s not shy about using the lower registers of his voice, people don’t really realize it. His cheerful nature tends to balance out how low his voice is. But when he’s being serious or angry, THATS when people notice.

[maideninorange]

Something I occasionally think about is why the spacesuits throughout the Pikmin series are Designed like that (in-universe I mean). Like, what features do a whistle and a glowing antenna like that have as something apparently part of the standard design? So here's my silly headcanon: mainly, they are intended to be safety features.

The antenna? It's meant to be a bright beacon that alerts potential rescuers right to someone in distress, especially when it's somewhere dark like a cave or the dark vacuum of space. It's this latter, probably very common, scenario that would inspire such a design feature. Especially considering how common place space travel is.

And as for the whistle? If the antenna is a distress beacon for the eyes, than the whistle is that for the ears. It's a built-in way to, assuming you are still conscious, let people know where you are. After all, what good will screaming do when you are drifting through space? No one can hear you scream in space...but they can hear a loud, sharp whistle! Also, assuming you are with a group of people, a great way to let them know where you are if you were to get separated during a worst case scenario. Especially since those helmets probably muffle your voice if you're far enough away. It's an easy way to play the hot-cold game of finding a sound's source going in places where such is usually perilous.

It just so happens that these safety features come quite in handy when you get stranded on a planet full of carrot creatures with tall, similarly built stems and respond well to the aforementioned whistle.

[meyerlansky]

it does make me laugh seeing film bros (gn) get their feathers ruffled over literally any part of goncharov because like

for all that people are complaining that it doesn't make sense as a scorsese work, as a product of the given time frame, as a cohesive piece of [fake] media, no one involved in any of this understands how organized crime itself works, MUCH LESS the specific flavors involved in cross-ethnic organized crime a la a russian gangster in naples would work in the first place

but you don't see me with my masters degree in inter-ethnic cooperation in organized crime tearing that shit apart, because i know how to have fun

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"... the discourse of criminalization fails to capture the complexity of the relationship between the First Nations and the criminal law, because it directs our gaze only to the criminalized and away from others. As with Peaychew, many forms of engagement with the criminal law are described in this book. I have found cases in which First Nations individuals laid Informations against white men as well as men from their own communities, alleging different types of offences, such as theft and assault; cases in which Aboriginal women and girls appeared as informants and witnesses and charged white and Métis men, as well as men from their own communities, with forms of sexual interference with, or “carnal knowledge” of, them or their daughters; cases in which only a handful of First Nations women and girls appeared as accused persons, charged with or implicated in the theft of small items, such as a tea kettle from an empty house, a silver spoon from an empty schoolhouse, the clothes that First Nations children were wearing when they ran away from the industrial school, or, in the case of Betsy Horsefall and Benjamin Gordon, in the theft of a horse that Betsy said was hers.

Perhaps the strongest argument of this book concerns the form and content of law and reflects my long-standing commitment to the importance of attending to the specificity of different legal forms and the relationship between them. The book represents a sustained call for a more precise definition and use of the concept of criminalization, one in which distinctions between criminal law as a legal form and other forms of law are recognized, and that seeks to apprehend the contexts, circumstances, and sites in which actions and practices of Aboriginal peoples were prosecuted – as crimes or as regulatory or other statutory offences.

Some of the historical literature reveals a certain imprecision with respect to the definition and scope of criminal law. Many scholars adopt a wide approach to criminal law, in which all legal forms that have an air of compulsion, coercion, or sanction are coloured with a criminal law brush. Recent work examining the efforts of the Canadian state to restrict and curtail traditional forms of Aboriginal expression and activity, including dances and ceremonies, hunting, and fishing, uses the language of criminalization to characterize them. For instance, a now iconic exemplar of criminalization is said to be found in amendments to Indian Act in 1884 that prohibited particular kinds of dances and celebrations (such as the potlatch in British Columbia). For the Plains First Nations, the most expansive and relevant Indian Act restrictions were introduced in an 1895 amendment to s. 114 that prohibited dances involving giveaways and wounding or mutilation. Although historical evidence implicates the police as well as Indian Department officials in efforts to enforce the prohibitions and prosecute these offences, the historical evidence also indicates that these prohibitions were resented, resisted, and ignored as well as only occasionally and unevenly enforced (indeed, they were almost unenforceable) on the ground. In any event, these provisions fell outside the ambit of criminal law.

Admittedly, caution is in order here. Interdisciplinary scholarship in socio-legal studies argues for a broader notion of crime – one that challenges the historical preoccupation with crimes of individual wrongdoers and the historical neglect of crimes of the powerful, including the state and corporate actors and institutions, as well as the historical neglect of the experience of the environment, culture, and entire communities as victims of forms of seldom criminalized violence. If one proceeds with criminal law narrowly construed (excluding some of the coercive provisions of the Indian Act, for instance), one may risk proceeding with too narrow an understanding of crime. The importance of critical engagement with a self-referential notion of true “criminal law” cannot be denied. The content of criminal law is neither universal nor transhistorical; and, importantly, criminalization is not self-evident.

The process of criminalization occurs when people are criminally prosecuted and convicted for forms of conduct that have become defined by the state as crimes. It may encompass the extension of criminal law over formerly non-criminal behaviour, or it may involve the systemic targeting, overpolicing, and criminal prosecution of particular groups and communities for particular kinds of offences. Inevitably, it is intended to express and enforce social denunciation for socially injurious conduct. In legal scholarship, it is important to be attentive to the analytic distinction between legal and extra-legal forms of compulsion and legal coercion, between prohibition and regulation, and between committal and conviction, in order to precisely identify the nature of the law under discussion.

To insist upon specificity in the scope and definition of criminal law need not lead one to an uncritical acceptance of the legitimacy of its norms. It is important, however, to be attentive to questions of form, content, and diversity of legal instruments deployed by the state, many of which contain offences but which do not involve the denunciation and sanction normally associated with criminal law.

An important and related line of inquiry concerns the way in which legal historians have or have not addressed the specificity of the two legal regimes of the Indian Act and the criminal law, and the sites of intersection between the Canadian government’s “Indian policy” and the criminal law component of its national policy. The Indian policy of the Canadian government intensified over the last two decades of the nineteenth century with the introduction of increasingly oppressive amendments to the Indian Act.

In recent work examining the efforts of the Canadian state to restrict and curtail traditional forms of Aboriginal expression and activity, the language of criminalization has been invoked. For some scholars, the prohibition of some forms of religious ceremonies and dances, together with special practices and policies, such as the pass system, offer evidence of the nature of the Canadian state’s treatment of Aboriginal peoples. For the most part, these initiatives occurred under the legislative auspices of the Indian Act or the administrative initiatives of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and his Indian Agents in the field. It has become commonplace in some of the literature to refer to the criminalization of Indians and Indian religious celebrations.

There are other voices in the historical literature that offer different emphases. It is significant, in my view, that one recent study expressly devoted to law, colonialism, and First Nations addresses the struggle over the right to fish and the regulatory framework, including offences, of the Fisheries Act. Nowhere in Douglas Harris’s careful study of the restriction and regulation of the Aboriginal fishers of British Columbia does he characterize the process as one of criminalization. Similarly, Katherine Pettipas’s equally rigorous study of the interference with and prosecution of First Nations ceremonies on the Prairies characterizes government policy as one of regulation.

We can also, however, find instances and forms of NWMP resistance to federal Indian policy. Pettipas’s carefully researched study of the regulation and repression of indigenous religious ceremonies on the Prairies provides irrefutable evidence of the legalized campaign of repression of forms of religious celebrations. Nevertheless, although her work demonstrates the lengths to which the government went to circumscribe and curtail these forms of religious expression, including the prosecution and imprisonment of a number of Aboriginal celebrants, she also notes that some members of the NWMP actually ignored orders to prevent dances and instead facilitated the events. Both Pettipas and John Jennings cite Stipendiary Magistrate Macleod’s refusal to convict Indians who had been arrested for performing a sun dance. Macleod, a former commissioner of the NWMP, is said to have delivered “a scathing rebuff” to the police who had made the arrests, likening their conduct to having made an arrest in a church.

In sum, Pettipas’s study of the regulation of Plains Indian religious ceremonies evinces a nuanced analysis, showing the uneven and contradictory tensions that accompanied this damaging legislative initiative. She reminds her readers that only some forms of dances and celebrations (those involving “giveaways”’ and “piercings”) were prohibited by the Indian Act; that because of its vagueness, the police often declined to enforce the infamous s. 114 of the Indian Act; and that even Indian officials were of the view that a prosecution should be undertaken only as a last resort. It is also clear that some First Nations people were prepared to “test” the strength and limits of the law.

In conclusion, the “self-evidence” of criminalization is a trap for the unwary. Criminal law becomes all law; criminalization becomes an umbrella that covers all manner of legal forms (from liquor violations, to hunting and fishing offences, to the Indian Act, and sometimes even criminal law). In critical legal historical work on criminal law, criminal law is depicted “in one dimensional terms” – criminal law “acts against” subordinate people (women, indigenous peoples, workers, and so on). This is the dominant account in the critical literature – inequalities of class, race, and gender are reinforced as the criminal law bears down on those brought before it. And yet some of the literature may also be read to offer a more relational notion of criminal law, even in a colonial context."

- Shelley A. M. Gavigan, Hunger, Horses, and Government Men: Criminal Law on the Aboriginal Plains, 1870-1905. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press for the Osgoode Society, 2012. p. 19-22

[news4dzhozhar]

[diet-poison]

Trying to enjoy this romantic scene between two characters on LA Law but he's carrying around a feather he found on the beach and I'm too distracted by his violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, something he should know about as a lawyer. What's it like watching TV normal style

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

the thing about people who use 'subjective morality' as a shield against being held accountable is like, cool, you can believe whatever you want about whether you should get to cut in line for ice cream. no one is obligated to give you the ice cream on that basis, nor are they obligated to not kick you out of line for being an asshole. stand by your beliefs you fucking pussy.

[msnihilist]

I might have to make my Ben 10 """oneshot""" a multi-chapter fic, because it's 8.5k words and I'm still in the pre-game.

[horsesarecreatures]

UNITED NATIONS, United States - After years of talks, United Nations’ member states finally agreed to a text on the first international treaty to protect the high seas, a fragile and vital treasure that covers nearly half the planet.

“The ship has reached the shore,” conference chair Rena Lee announced at the UN headquarters in New York shortly before 9.30pm on Saturday local time, to applause from delegates.

Mrs Rena Lee is Singapore’s Ambassador for Oceans and Law of the Sea Issues and Special Envoy of the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

After more than 15 years of discussions, including four years of formal talks, the third so-called final negotiating session in less than a year heralded the long-awaited consensus.

The treaty is seen as essential to conserving 30 per cent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, as agreed by world governments in a historic accord signed in Montreal in December.

Following two weeks of intense talks at the UN headquarters in New York, including a marathon overnight session Friday into Saturday, delegates finalised a text that cannot be significantly altered.

“There will be no reopening or discussions of substance,” Mrs Lee told negotiators.

The agreement will be formally adopted at a later date once it has been vetted by lawyers and translated into the United Nations’ six official languages, she announced.

In a statement on Sunday, Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said it welcomed the “successful and timely conclusion” of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, which came just after the 40th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) treaty in 1982.

“The success of the BBNJ Intergovernmental Conference process reaffirms the importance and relevance of Unclos and multilateral cooperation, and the United Nations in establishing and upholding a rules-based international order,” the MFA spokesman said.

The spokesman added that Mrs Lee’s leadership “enabled parties to bridge differences and arrive at an ambitious and future-proof BBNJ Agreement”.

The high seas begin at the border of countries’ exclusive economic zones, which extend up to 370km from coastlines. They thus fall under the jurisdiction of no country.

Even though the high seas comprise more than 60 per cent of the world’s oceans and nearly half the planet’s surface, they have long drawn far less attention than coastal waters and a few iconic species.

Ocean ecosystems create half the oxygen humans breathe and limit global warming by absorbing much of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities.

But they are threatened by climate change, pollution and overfishing.

Only about one per cent of the high seas are currently protected.

When the new treaty comes into force after being formally adopted, signed and ratified by enough countries, it will allow the creation of marine protected areas in these international waters.

The treaty on the “conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction” also obliges countries to conduct environmental impact assessments of proposed activities on the high seas.

A highly sensitive chapter on the sharing of potential benefits of newly discovered marine resources was one of the focal points of tensions before it was finally overcome as the scheduled talks, due to end Friday, overran by a day.

Developing countries, without the means to afford costly research, had fought not to be excluded from the expected windfall from the commercialisation of potential substances discovered in the international waters.

Eventual profits are likely from the pharmaceutical, chemical or cosmetic use of newly discovered marine substances that belong to no one.

As in other international forums, notably climate negotiations, the debate ended up being a question of ensuring equity between the poorer global South and richer North, observers noted.

In a move seen as an attempt to build trust between rich and poor countries, the European Union pledged €40 million (S$57.3 million) in New York to facilitate the ratification of the treaty and its early implementation.

The EU also announced US$860 million for research, monitoring and conservation of oceans in 2023 at the Our Ocean conference in Panama that ended on Friday.

Panama said a total of US$19 billion, including a US$6 billion commitment from the United States, was pledged at the conference to protect seas.

In 2017, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling on nations to establish a high seas treaty.

It originally planned four negotiating sessions but had to pass two resolutions to ensure two additional sessions.