Born in 1937 and educated as a lawyer and a legal scholar, Mr. In 1982, as president of the entire conference, Mr. Among the Ramon Magsaysay award winners this year was Tommy Koh. Koh chaired a pivotal negotiating committee of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea.
Because of many disputes that have arisen including the Strait of Hormuz, koh led more than 150 nations to adopt the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which has been in the news.
The award citation lauds him for “bridging a fundamental divide over seabed mining between wealthy and developing, capitalist and non-capitalist, maritime and landlocked nations”.
The biggest challenge was the Reagan Administration’s radical demands on seabed mining which were rejected by the developing countries. [U.S. President Ronald Reagan changed the stance of the U.S. taken during the Jimmy Carter era.
He objected to UNCLOS Part XI’s treatment of the deep seabed as the “common heritage of mankind” that he saw as going against free-enterprise and private-property norms.]
