Mr. President,

I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the members of the Pacific Island Forum. We would like to thank Mr. Thembile Joyini of South Africa, Mr. Andreas Motzfeld Kravik of Norway, and Ms. Margo Deiye of Nauru for bringing the negotiations on the respective resolutions to their successful conclusion and we look forward to their adoption.

Mr. President,

We welcome the continued emphasis on the universal and unified character of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS remains of vital strategic importance as the basis for national, regional and global action and cooperation in the marine sector, and it should continue to be reflected as it is in the Oceans omnibus resolution. It connects to a number of important events that have happened this year and I would like to highlight them and their inter linkages.

In late March and early April we had the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee established by General Assembly resolution 69/292: Development of an international legally binding instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction. It was followed by the second meeting in August and September this year.

Our discussions were productive and we made good progress due to the skillful leadership of Ambassador Eden Charles from Trinidad and Tobago in steering our discussions. We are, however, dismayed that we could not welcome the progress achieved so far in the context of the Oceans Omnibus resolution which would clearly have been a factual statement. As many of us have been racing to meet the deadline to submit inputs on Monday this week, we will now need to study the wealth of information in order to prepare ourselves for the next meeting of the PrepCom which will start in March next year. We certainly hope to continue to make good progress as we are now at the half-way point in the preparatory process.