Article 121 UNCLOS

Article 121 of UNCLOS sets the regime of islands: an island is a naturally formed area of land surrounded by and above water at high tide, and it generates the same maritime zones as land territory. Paragraph 3 is the contested limb: rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own have no EEZ or continental shelf. The 2016 South China Sea arbitration gave the first authoritative reading of paragraph 3, holding that none of the Spratly features, including Itu Aba, qualified as fully entitled islands.