Office of the Historian

Editorial Note

The General Assembly, on December 14, 1954, passed two resolutions, 899 (IX) dealing with “Draft Articles on the Continental Shelf” and 900 (IX) calling for an “International Technical Conference on the Conservation of the Living Resources of the Sea”. The former states in substantive part that the General Assembly:

  • “1. Requests the International Law Commission to devote the necessary time to the study of the regime of the high seas, the regime of territorial waters and all related problems in order to complete its work on these topics and submit its final report in time for the General Assembly to consider them as a whole, in accordance with resolution 798 (VIII), at its eleventh session;
  • “2. Decides to include the final report of the International Law Commission on these topics in the provisional agenda for the eleventh session of the General Assembly [i.e., in 1956].”

In the second of these resolutions, the Assembly requested the “Secretary-General to convene an international technical conference at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on 18 April 1955 to study the problem of the international conservation of the living resources of the sea and to make appropriate scientific and technical recommendations which shall take into account the principles of the present resolution and shall not prejudge the related problems awaiting consideration by the General Assembly”.

The full texts of these resolutions are printed consecutively in United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, Resolutions Adopted by the General Assembly during Its Ninth Session from 21 September to 17 December 1954, pages 50 and 51.