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How we stirred a storm and won the sea
Dr. Hiran W. Jayewardene, Secretary General of the Indian Ocean Marine Affairs Co-operation (IOMAC) was in the forefront of a successful bid by Sri Lanka to win a large sea area for the country more than two decades ago.

"It was a small but effective delegation," he says. Apart from Dr. Jayewardene, who was the Special Advisor on the Law of the Sea, the delegation included Karen Breckenridge, Christopher Pinto and Susantha de Alwis.

In 1978, the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea which had started its work in 1972 was attempting to resolve some of the "hard core" issues that had defied resolution despite years of negotiations.

Dr. Jayewardene said the conference was perhaps the most ambitious, largest and long drawn out international negotiations in the history of mankind as it dealt with three-fourth of the earth's surface and involved the participation of almost all the countries of the world. Some of the sessions were attended by thousands of delegates.

One of the thorny issues was the "definition of the continental margin". In April 1978, the Sri Lankan delegation formally objected to the conclusion of a special negotiating committee headed by Venezuela's Andres Aguilar.

The objection halted the work of the committee and created a stir. Sri Lanka's objection was based on equity and scientific facts, which were later substantiated before the conference with comparative information from continental margins from around the world.

Sri Lanka demanded an exception to the new rule called "Irish Formula" which was used as a ratio of distance and sediment thickness to limit national claims to the continental margin and stood firm on certain proposals which would have limited the country's right to the sea area. And with successful arguments, Sri Lanka overcame the maximum distance of 350 nautical miles limit set for continental shelves of all countries, which resulted in the formulation of the special exception later adopted unanimously by the entire conference in 1981.

The formal agreement was signed in 1982 bringing years of negotiations to a successful end. The historic signing of United Nations Law of the Sea Convention and Final Act of the UNCLOS Conference in 1982 under which Sri Lanka gained an additional 350,000 square miles of seabed area.

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