Underwater Cultural Heritage and International Law

The UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage 2001, which entered into force internationally in 2009, is designed to deal with threats to underwater cultural heritage arising as a result of advances in deep-water technology. However, the relationship between this new treaty and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is deeply controversial. This study of the international legal framework regulating human interference with underwater cultural heritage explores the development and present status of the framework and gives some consideration to how it may evolve in the future. The central themes are the issues that provided the UNESCO negotiators with their greatest challenges: the question of ownership rights in sunken vessels and cargoes; sovereign immunity and sunken warships; the application of salvage law; the ethics of commercial exploitation; and, most crucially, the question of jurisdictional competence to regulate activities beyond territorial sea limits.

• As the first full-scale study of the subject to be published in almost two decades, it provides an up-to-date and much-needed account of a rapidly developing and topical area of international law

• Written in a clear and jargon-free style, making it accessible to a wide range of readers, including those with non-legal backgrounds

• Draws on illustrations of state practice from a wide range of reliable sources to provide interesting and valuable insight into how States apply the legal rules in practice