Resolving the Strait of Hormuz Impasse Using the Malacca-Singapore Model

Gist The article compares the historical resolution of maritime rights in the Malacca-Singapore Straits with the ongoing security crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. By adopting a Cooperative Mechanism and the legal concept of "transit passage", Southeast Asian nations successfully balanced their sovereign rights with global shipping needs. For a UPSC aspirant, this provides a critical comparative framework for understanding how international maritime law can theoretically resolve overlapping territorial claims at strategic global choke points, despite differing geopolitical realities. Background The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea UNCLOS , formulated in the 1970s and 1980s, is the international agreement governing ocean use. Under UNCLOS, a coastal state's sovereign territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles nm from its coast. When a strait is narrower than 24 nm , the territorial waters of the opposing states overlap, eliminating any "high seas" corridor. Under older customary law, foreign vessels in these waters only enjoyed "innocent passage" —a restrictive right that coastal states could suspend for security reasons, and which required submarines to travel on the surface. To accommodate major naval…