Of Deep Seas and Fishes: Palk Bay Maritime Conflict

Fisheries, that is the lifeblood of for the fishermen in the coastal regions of India and Sri Lanka (Palk Bay) is yet again going through a battle. The arena is now bestowed with latitudinal biodiversity [i]and absence of strong currents, for each party to come in for the treasures of the seas, in the form of seafood. The territorial

?Since the end of Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009, a myriad of complicated issues resulting in conflicts and tensions with serious ramifications have taken place. Island of Kachchatheevu, a frequent poaching domain for India in Sri Lankan waters has been the heart of it, even after commitments from both governments “to find a permanent solution to fisherman issue”.[ii]??

BACKGROUND

The Government of India and that of Sri Lanka signed an agreement on March 23, 1976, which led to establishment of maritime boundaries in the Gulf of Manaar and the Bay of Bengal.[iii] Post this, International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL), it was illegal from any fisherman to from whichever?side to delve into one another water to fish.[iv]

In the year 1960, in an tempt to revitalise the economy, the Indian government experimented with the mechanised trawling in the District of then Rameswaram.[v] With the urge to for a fresh grounds to fish, the Indian fisherman began to encroach upon Sri Lankan waters despite the water- border agreement.[vi]

Importance of Palk Bay

It is the Palk Bay, which is considered to be the backbone of which supports a wide diversity of marine living resources and related livelihood. The Palk Bay is a 137-kilometre-long bay, bordered five Indian districts and three Lankan districts which consisted of at least 262,562 Indian fisherman and about 119,000 Sri Lankan fishermen.[vii] The Sri Lankan side is littered with a series of Islands, but the Indian side is devoid of any of these island ecosystems.[viii]

The relationship between India and Sri Lanka is one of intimate ties and commonality of culture. Thousands of Tamil laborers of India were ferried across so as to provide labour for the development of tea plantations. It is when the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka happened, many of the laborers entered the region of Palk Bay.[ix]

Tamil War & Consequences

There was a ban on the fishing activities in Palk Bay during the early 1980s when the Sri Lankan administration observed that armed rebellion was engaging with fishermen in their demand of a new country for the oppressed Tamils. This precautionary purpose of the Sri Lankan Navy resulted in the decline of the fishing activities, ultimately leaving Sri Lankan waters open for Indian trawlers to fish freely.[x]?

Post lifting of the ban, the Sri Lankan Navy had expanded and become more vigilant. The primary attention of the Navy now was towards the Indian fishermen poaching in the region. The Navy, till date has arrested at least 1, 348 Indian fishermen till date.[xi] The regulation of the fisheries industries then began through The Fisheries and Aquatic Resource Act No. 2 of 1996 and the Sri Lanka Coast Conservation Act no. 57 and (Amendment of 1988), this ensured that the activity of fishing to be carried out in a stringent manner.[xii] Along with this, Sri Lanka enforced a Nation plan of action so as to deter, eliminate and prevent Illegal, Unregulated and Unregulated (IUU) fishing in 2013.[xiii] The battle for Palk Bay had then begun.

The efforts by the Indian side in order to ease the tensions have been minimal.[xiv] Skirmishes between the Fishermen and the Navy have the later to prevails over the former, where the most affected community continue to be these fishermen.

ANALYSIS WRT INTERNATIONAL LAWS

The United Nations Convention of the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) have both, India and Sri Lanka as their party. Despite this, both parties have not approached this forum.[xv] The UNCLOS gets the prima facie jurisdiction under Part XV of UNCLOS[xvi], and as India and Sri Lanka have ratified the same the same on 19th July 1994 and 29 June 1995[xvii] the most appropriate forum for the same is this itself. The most reasonable reason for both countries not to go for international litigation is multifaceted. The dependency of Sri Lanka over India for imports and exports, Sri Lanka facing the risk of harming other economic interests, the camaraderie between the Indian side and Sri Lankan side in terms of customs, religion and language as well as literature between the Tamils of Sri Lanka and Indian side are some the factors that weigh in. moreover, political implications for Sri Lanka, in case of any wrong stand-off has also to be considered. The promotion of trawlers by the state another tangent through which this issue gets further complicated.[xviii]?This shows the lack of commitment of India towards international standards set due to the 1976 IMBL in terms of preserving the marine resources.

The signing of IMBL in 1976 and other agreements was supposed to be the answer to the issues related to the maritime boundaries.[xix] The equidistance principle in most cases, have come to aid in order to determine the maritime boundaries. It connotes that the maritime boundary of a country is to be a medial line which has to be equidistant from coastal areas of neighbouring nations.[xx] This principle now has become quite inefficient, as there was a need felt in the 1974 agreement, wherein a more of marine space was distributed at the cost of other.[xxi]?This was primarily due to the inability of making out an equidistant median. The fishermen too because of the lack of any clear marine boundary poach fishes over unknown waters.

Article 206 of UNCLOS also comes into consideration as India, due to its failure of evaluating the potential effect of the Sethusamdram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP) in Sri Lanka. India also had the obligation to have a precautionary approach towards preserving the marine ecosystem under Part XII (Article 194 and 204) of the UNCLOS. The most recent precedent in this regard becomes the case of South China sea case[xxii] at The International Tribunal for the Law of Sea (ITLOS), where it has been held that approaches which cause pollution substantial in nature are grounds for reporting under Article 206. Obiter dicta in the instant case is similar when compared to the system of ‘dynamite- propeller’ used by Chinese fishermen, as trawlers can be categorised as a harmful change to the ecosystem of the seas.

Article 197 read along with Article 123 of the UNCLOS imposes duty on the parties involved to provide prior notification, cooperate and procced only when consultation is done. Here, India has not fulfilled its obligation by not engaging with the Sri Lankan side.[xxiii]

CONCLUSION

It is evident that both India and Sri Lanka have shown dedication towards the multilateral agreements signed amongst each other throughout decades of their relationship. But in the instant case, failure of complying with the international standards and the complexity of the issue in the status quo ante has left international litigation as the only option amongst the parties. There is a dire need for a more specific and clear line of division between these two nations from the UNCLOS as an initial step of providing a long-term solution to this prolonged issue.

REFERENCES

[i] Klaus Rohde, Latitudinal gradients in species diversity: the search for the primary cause, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Dec., 1992), pp. 514-527, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3545569

[ii] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, “Visit of External Affairs Minister to Sri Lanka, February 5–6, 2016,” press release, February 6, 2016,

https://www.mea.gov.in/pressreleases.htm?dtl/26330/Visit_of_External_Affairs_Minister_to_Sri_Lanka_February_56_2016, Accessed 19 June 2020.

[iii] Limits in the Seas, No. 66 – Historic Water boundary: India – Srilanka,?U.S. Department of State, December 12, 1975 https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/58833.pdf, Accessed on 20 June 2020.

[iv] V. Suryanarayan, The India–Sri Lanka Fisheries Dispute: Creating a Win-Win in the Palk Bay, 9 September 2016, Carnegie India, https://carnegieindia.org/2016/09/09/india-sri-lanka-fisheries-dispute-creating-win-win-in-palk-bay-pub-64538, Accessed on 19 June 2020.

[v] Ritika V. Kapoor, Reviving Indo-Lanka relations: Reigning in bottom trawling, 2 November 2018, Observer Research Foundation, https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/reviving-indo-lanka-relations-reigning-in-bottom-trawling-45299/, Accessed in 23 June 2020.

[vi] Bodhisattwa Majumdar & Ankit Malhotra, The Fishing Wars: Maritime Border Conflicts between Sri Lanka and India, 12 June 2020, https://www.mjilonline.org/the-fishing-wars-maritime-border-conflicts-between-sri-lanka-and-india/#_ftn4, Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[vii] V. Suryanarayan, Conflict Over Fisheries in the Palk Bay Region, Lancer Publishers, 2005, pg 10-53.

[viii] H. Mohamad Kasim, Resources and livelihoods of the Palk Bay: Information from India & Sri Lanka, ResearchGate, 24 August 2015, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281198322, Accessed on 20 June 2020.

[ix] Supra.

[x] N Manoharan, Madhumati Deshpande, Fishing in troubled waters: Fishermen Issue in India-Srilanka Relations, India Quaterly: A Journal of International Affairs, Volume 74 Issue 1, March 2018, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0974928417749643#:~:text=The%20various%20dimensions%20%20venture%20into%20Indian%20waters., Accessed on 21 June 2020.

[xi] Joeri Scholtens, Limits to the governability of transboundary fisheries: implications for small-scale fishers in Northern Sri Lanka and beyond, Springer International Publishing, Chapter 27, January 2015, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281319980_Limits_to_the_Governability_of_Transboundary_Fisheries_Implications_for_Small-Scale_Fishers_in_Northern_Sri_Lanka_and_Beyond, Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[xii] Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Colombo. Sri Lanka, The Compendium of High Seas Fishing Legislations in Sri Lanka, February 2016, https://extwprlegs1.fao.org/docs/pdf/srl4092.pdf, Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[xiii] Sashini Fernando, User Rights: Conflict between Sri Lanka's small scale fishermen and mechanized trawlers in Northern Sri Lanka, Tropic Sri Lanka, https://www.fao.org/fishery/static/tenure-user-rights/root/volume6/C65.pdf, Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[xiv] ID at 11.

[xv] Natalie Klein, Can International Litigation Solve the India- Sri Lanka Fishing Dispute?, The Diplomat, 14 July 2017, https://thediplomat.com/2017/07/can-international-litigation-solve-the-india-sri-lanka-fishing-dispute/, Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[xvi] Settlement of Disputes, Part XV, United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea?of 10 December 1982, https://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/UNCLOS-TOC.htm, Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[xvii]“Chronological list of accessions and successions to the Convention and the related Agreements”, UN, https://www.un.org/depts/los/reference_files/chronological_lists_of_ratifications.htm, Accessed on 22nd May, 2020.

[xviii] The Hindu Net Desk, All you need to know about Sri Lanka’s bottom trawling ban and India’s deep-sea fishing plan, The Hindu, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/sri-lankas-bottom-trawling-ban-indias-deep-sea-fishing-all-you-need-to-know/article19396217.ece, Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[xix] Roy Chowdhury, Rahul, Trends in the Delimitation of India’s Maritime Boundaries, Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis, https://www.idsa-india.org/an-jan9-5.html, Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[xx] Dallmeyer, Dorinda G. and De Vorsey, Louis, Right to Oceanic resources: Deciding and drawing maritime boundaries, BRIL, (Jan, 1989), at 34-37.

[xxi] Legault, L and Hankey, B.,?International Maritime Boundaries,?American Society of International Law, (Volume 1) 208-209.

[xxii] Dr. Graham Blackmore, Fisheries Problems in the South China Sea, Global Underwater Explorers, https://www.gue.com/fisheries-problems-south-china-sea Accessed on 23 June 2020.

[xxiii] Chinthaka Mendis, Sovereignty vs. trans-boundary environmental harm: The evolving International law obligations and the Sethusamuduram Ship Channel Project, United Nations/ Nippon Foundations, 2006 https://www.un.org/depts/los/nippon/unnff_programme_home/fellows_pages/fellows_papers/mendis_0607_sri_lanka.pdf, Accessed on 23 June 2020.?