St. Kitts and Nevis has ratified High Ambition Coalition for Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), also known as the High Seas Treaty. It makes the 54th country to ratify. The sixtieth country to ratify will trigger a hundred-and-twenty-day countdown, when the global Agreement will enter into force and become international law.
Since its founding in 2011, the High Seas Alliance has been working towards protecting the 50% of the planet that is the High Seas; the global ocean beyond national jurisdiction. This area includes some of the most biologically important, least protected, and most critically threatened ecosystems in the world.
For most of the High Seas, there have been no legally binding mechanisms for establishing marine protected areas or a global coordination mechanism to assess the environmental impacts of activities in areas of the ocean beyond national jurisdiction.
“As a small island developing state, St. Kitts and Nevis remains deeply committed to advancing the implementation of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” said Dr. Mutryce Williams, Permanent Representative of Saint Kitts and Nevis to the United Nations, in a national statement, noting the country ratified UNCLOS in 1993.
