One ambassador's speech, and 200 miles of ocean for every coast
A 1967 UN speech about seabed minerals began the process behind the 1982 Law of the Sea treaty, which gave coastal states a 200-mile economic zone.
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#international-law.
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Red notices: Interpol's nearest thing to a global warrant
Interpol runs no manhunts of its own. It links police across 196 countries, and the Guardian found some regimes using that channel against critics.
The first treaty every country ratified is mending the ozone
The 1987 Montreal Protocol cut the chlorine reaching the stratosphere and put the ozone layer on course to heal by mid-century, by UN assessment.
Eighty-one states in Vienna wrote the rules diplomats still keep
The 1961 Vienna Convention wrote down 200 years of custom, upheld by reciprocity. Its immunity rule saw PC Yvonne Fletcher's killers expelled, not tried.
Judith Jarvis Thomson named the trolley problem, then doubted it
The philosopher who named the trolley problem later said you may not pull the switch unless you would steer it into yourself. West Point still teaches it.
The first US commercial deep-sea mining permit is under review
NOAA is weighing a bid from The Metals Company USA to mine seabed nodules beyond US waters. No company has ever held such a US recovery permit.
GATT ran world trade for 47 years, then became the WTO
The US Congress never ratified a planned trade organisation, so a 1947 treaty ran world trade until the WTO replaced it in 1995.
Every UN member but the US signed the children's rights treaty
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out what every under-18 is owed, from a name to contact with both parents. Scotland made it law in 2024.