Law of the Sea - Third law of the sea conference

The Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea opened at UN headquarters in New York in December 1973 with a brief organizational session. Its real work commenced the following year in Caracas, Venezuela, with the important decision to proceed on the basis of a negotiated "package deal"—meaning no one provision or section would be formally approved until all others were in place. This informal approach was dictated not only by the interdependence of the issues involved but also by the need to produce ultimately an overall balance that could command the widest support. The first informal text, as the agreed basis for negotiations, was prepared in 1975. It was followed by a series of revisions.