Codifying an Oceanic Sovereignty: Micronesian Participation in the Law of the Sea

Keywords: Law of the sea, sovereignty, territoriality, Micronesia, imperialism, Indigenous agency
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 29

Abstract

The 1973-1982 Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea sought to establish a global system of ocean governance, bringing together major established powers such as the United States and the Soviet Union with newly independent island states such as Niue and Fiji. Geographers and historians alike have overlooked the role of island entities both newly independent and on the cusp of independence in the Law of the Sea Conference, thereby peripheralizing island entities’ participation in geopolitics. Drawing on work in political geography and Pacific Islands history, this paper addresses the Congress of Micronesia’s participation in the Third Conference on the Law of the Sea from 1973-1978, when the Congress represented the not-yet-independent entity comprised today of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, the Republics of Palau and the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Using archived documents from the Congress of Micronesia, the United States territorial administration, and the United Nations General Assembly, the paper argues that the Congress of Micronesia instrumentalized the Conference to buttress political sovereignty claims in order to preserve ancestral relationships between islanders and seascapes. That is, the Congress of Micronesia used the Conference on the Law of the Sea to legitimate political claims to an ocean-based worldview. By positioning the articulation of an oceanic sovereignty alongside contemporaneous US militarism in the region, the paper re-centers islanders’ agentive role in twentieth century geopolitics, thereby contributing to the broader project of decolonizing political geography.