UNCLOS Must Evolve to Counter 21st-Century Maritime Coercion, Says Diplomat

Writing for 'India Narrative', former Indian diplomat Sanjay Kumar Verma said that the Strait of Hormuz underscores how geography can make settled legal rights vulnerable to coercion. He stated that the developments in the Taiwan Strait highlighted that navigational freedoms can be compromised when law becomes entangled into sovereignty disputes and strategic signalling.

Additionally, the South China Sea, Verma said, demonstrates most clearly that a binding legal ruling without consistent implementation cannot restore order.

The former Indian diplomat stressed that the UNCLOS stands as one of the most ambitious achievements of post-war international diplomacy.

"It gave the oceans a legal order where earlier there had been overlapping claims, uneven practice, and the constant temptation to let raw power settle contested questions. It balanced the rights of coastal states with the needs of maritime powers and offered a framework within which navigation, resource use, marine research, and dispute settlement could be managed with a measure of predictability. Even today, despite all the strain visible across the world's most contested waters, there is no viable substitute for it," Verma detailed, highlighting the significance of UNCLOS.

"Yet if one wishes to understand why UNCLOS now appears insufficient in practice, the clearest point of departure is the Strait of Hormuz. Transit passage is protected in law, yet geography still enables coercive leverage. Threats of disruption resonate immediately through energy markets and shipping calculations, and legal entitlement alone does not neutralise the strategic value of a chokepoint. The crisis of UNCLOS is not that the law is absent, but that law, by itself, is no longer enough where coercive capability and strategic location combine," he added.

According to Verma, UNCLOS was framed in an era when codified rules were expected to shape state behaviour over time. That belief persists, but it no longer holds the same force. The solution, he said, does not lie in abandoning UNCLOS but in reinforcing it with robust compliance mechanisms, tighter interpretive discipline, and deeper bilateral, minilateral, and plurilateral cooperation.

"If the twenty-first century is not to drift toward a maritime order shaped increasingly by intimidation, ambiguity, and incremental fait accompli, the law of the sea must enter a second phase of life. Its principles remain sound. What no longer suffices is the assumption that sound principles will enforce themselves. The task now is to ensure that the legal order at sea is matched by a political and operational order willing to defend it," the seasoned diplomat wrote.

- IANS