History lessons for settling disputes on litigious territories

• Main Author: Oreshenkov, Alexander
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: Law and Policy; Arctic; Svalbard; Norway; Alaska
• Online Access: http://library.arcticportal.org/681/; http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/29/1321.html

Countries in the Arctic region are about to start dividing the Arctic shelf areas. Problems pertaining to the international legal status of territories in the Arctic have not sprung up out of nothing. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union had an opportunity to reaffirm or establish their jurisdiction over a much larger part of the Arctic littoral land, and yet they lost Alaska, the Svalbard islands, and the so-called “common region” between Russia and Norway. An analysis of the historical and legal aspects of the current sovereign jurisdiction over land surface territories that serve as points of departure in measuring the limits of exclusive economic zones and the continental shelf beyond them may have significance for the delimitation of maritime areas between Russia and its Arctic neighbors. For Russia, the Crimean War of 1853-1856 was the starting point for the loss of the bulk of the named regions.