| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣海洋大學 === 海洋法律研究所 === 93 === From the manner of the distribution of judges and the constitution of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, it’s obviously that the developing countries are trying to establish another kind of international court or tribunal which may be able to attain the trust of the international community since they were distrusted by the exercise of the International Court of Justice.
Not only the states parties to the Convention on the Law of the Sea but also Non-states parties, even including the entities, can use the procedures provided by the Tribunal to settle disputes and become the parties to a case before the Tribunal. The innovation solves the problems of the International Court of Justice that only allows states to utilize the proceedings to deal with disputes of international nature.
Compared with the International Court of Justice which can deal with any dispute concerning the international law, the scope of cases before the Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which can deal with the disputes concerning the interpretation or application of the Convention or of other international agreements conferring the jurisdiction to the Tribunal and connected with the purpose of the Convention, is apparently much narrowed. However, it seems that the meeting of the states parties intends to magnify the jurisdiction of the Tribunal to make it possible to include all matters specially provided for in any agreement conferring the jurisdiction to the Tribunal when the statute of the Tribunal was drafted. In other words, based on the agreement between the parties to a dispute, the nature of cases before the Tribunal is almost unlimited.
Undoubtedly, the Third World countries mistrusted the International Court of Justice at the beginning; nonetheless, they changed their mind to have recourses to the function of mechanism of international courts or tribunals for peaceful settlement of disputes when they understood it was impossible for developing countries to compete against developed countries on the achievement of science and technology, or on the ability of force. Moreover, they try to institute a new international court or tribunal, accepted both by developed and developing countries, in order to create a new situation and reach the goal where all states are able to get along peacefully with each other and share all resource of the world equally, no matter big states or small.
The situation of Taiwan is similar with almost all the developing countries when establishing the Tribunal. How to employ the mechanism of the Tribunal to create the advantages for Taiwan to improve the international relationship must be the direction for the Government of Taiwan to pursue.
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