Status of Rocks in the Law of the Sea with Relying on the South China Sea Arbitration Award

Abstract Islands and rocks are entitled different maritime zones in international law of the sea. Article 121(3) allocated to rocks has articulated briefly and without indicating any definitions or characters of this feature. Paragraph 3 provided two conditions for rocks in order to create exclusive economic zone and continental shelf zone. The South China Sea tribunal has interpreted this paragraph for the first time and answered some questions such as what does rocks mean? And what is the relationship between rocks and islands and what does human habitation and economic life clauses provided? This article has confirmed some findings of the tribunal and rejected others and reached these conclusions: rocks imply rocky islands. The lack of both human habitation and economic life clauses are needed to deprive rocks of generating broad maritime zones. Tribunal Initiatives like establishing the link between habitants of rocks and economic activities, adding natural condition to “of its-self” phrase and imposing qualitative standard on “cannot sustain” are not acceptable based on the text of the article 121 of UNCLOS. The methodology of this research is descriptive-analytical which was done with the help of library source.