The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, adopted in 1982, identifies navigational rights, territorial sea limits, the legal status of resources on the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, the conservation and management of living marine resources and other important features. However, the Caspian Sea is beyond the jurisdiction of the Convention, and the norms of the international law of the sea do not apply to it. The Caspian Sea needs specific legal regulation, and this is because of its uniqueness: it is neither a sea nor a lake.
More than ten years ago, the littoral Caspian States—Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation and Turkmenistan—agreed on two fundamentally important points: the exclusive rights to the Caspian resources belong to these five States; and the Convention regarding the status of the Caspian Sea may be adopted only through the mutual approval of these States. In reality, the negotiations have been complicated due to the divergence of opinions on important international issues, such as navigation, fishery, natural resources and environmental issues.
The position of the States concerning the division of the Caspian deserves special attention. The Russian Federation suggested dividing the Caspian seabed according to a modified median line, while the water surface would remain for general use. In other words, the seabed and the water surface should be considered as objects with separate sets of regulations. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan suggest similar bimodal schemes: the water area and seabed must be considered as separate objects and are subject to independent regulations. However, Iran proposed to either establish a condominium regime or divide the Caspian into five national sectors, including Iran’s 20-per-cent share. These and some other discontents on various Caspian issues made negotiations complicated, sometimes even leading to conflicts.
The first step towards the creation of an effective Caspian regime was taken by the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan in 1998 when they reached an agreement identifying sovereign rights regarding the exploitation of the Caspian interior resources. Four years later, in May 2002, they signed a Protocol to the agreement establishing the geographical position of the median line. Later that year, the Presidents of the Russian Federation and Azerbaijan also signed an agreement on the division of the contiguous Caspian seabed, which identifies the median line according to which treaties would perform extraction of mineral resources. In 2003, a similar agreement was signed between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Also, a trilateral agreement identifying the junction point of all the median lines was signed by the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, which specifies that the northern 64 per cent of the sub-surface boundaries are to be divided, giving 19 per cent to the Russian Federation, 18 per cent to Azerbaijan and 27 per cent to Kazakhstan.
The special representative of the Russian President in the Caspian region, Viktor Kaljuzhnij stated that “final adjustment concerning the Caspian status will be achieved through bilateral and trilateral agreements when the whole seabed of the Caspian Sea is divided into five zones”. However, there is still no agreement signed by all five littoral States, which leaves the Caspian status still undefined.
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