Kevin Baumert
Biography
U.S. Department of State Boulder, Colorado, USA
Publications
The Practice of Archipelagic States: A Study of StudiesIn 2014, as part of its Limits in the Seas series, the U.S. Department of State published studies assessing the maritime claims of the following 16 states: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Cabo Verde, Comoros, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Indonesia, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Seychelles, the Solomon Islands, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.1 As each study notes at the outset, its “purpose” is to “examine a coastal State’s maritime claims and . . . assess their consistency with international law,” according to the views of the U.S. government. These studies complement the Department of State’s previously published Limits in the Seas studies, including those assessing the maritime claims of Fiji, Jamaica, Maldives, and S˜ao Tom´e and Pr´ıncipe. Collectively, these 20 studies cover all claimed archipelagic states that have promulgated archipelagic baselines enclosing some or all of their islands. This article describes the findings of these studies and assesses the degree to which those states claiming archipelagic status under the law of the sea have conformed to the requirements of international law in promulgating their maritime claims.