Moon Treaty

Moon Treaty

Long name: Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies
Ratifications and signatories of the treaty   Parties   Signatories   Non-parties
Signed	December 18, 1979
Location	New York, USA
Effective	July 11, 1984
Condition	5 ratifications
Signatories	11[1]
Parties	18[2][1] (as of January 2019)
Depositary	Secretary-General of the United Nations
Languages	English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese
Moon Treaty at Wikisource

The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,^[3][4] better known as the Moon Treaty or Moon Agreement, is a multilateral treaty that turns jurisdiction of all celestial bodies (including the orbits around such bodies) over to the participant countries. Thus, all activities would conform to international law, including the United Nations Charter.

It has not been ratified by any state that engages in self-launched human spaceflight or has plans to do so (e.g. the United States, the larger part of the member states of the European Space Agency, Russia (former Soviet Union), People's Republic of China and Japan) since its creation in 1979, and thus it has little to no relevancy in international law.^[5] As of January 2019, 18 states are parties to the treaty.^[1]

History

After the 1967 non-armament Outer Space Treaty was signed, it was followed in 1968 with the United Nations convened UNISPACE, the United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. It was the first of a series of UN-sponsored conferences intended to create an international framework of laws to guide humanity's use of outer space resources.^[6] However, the efforts failed.^[7]

After ten more years of negotiations, the Moon Treaty was created in 1979 as a framework of laws to develop a regime of detailed procedures, and as such, it remained imprecise: its Article 11.5 states that the exploitation of the natural shall be governed by an international regime that would establish the appropriate procedures. In order to define this regime or laws, a series of UN-sponsored conferences took place, but brought no consensus. The continuing disagreement is based mainly over the meaning of "Common Heritage of Mankind" and on the rights of each country to the natural resources of the Moon.^[6]

On July 29 and 31, 1980, the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space, which was a part of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held hearings on the Moon Treaty. S. Neil Hosenball was one of the supporters of the treaty, and he attempted to compare the Moon Treaty to mining rights within the United States. Hosenball was unsuccessful in his attempt to convince the committee that the United States should ratify the Moon Treaty. The opposition, led by Leigh Ratiner of the L-5 Society, stated that the Moon Treaty was opposed to free enterprise and private property rights. Ratiner provided a potential solution to the Moon Treaty, and suggested that there should be legal claims to the Moon and "there should be a system to register such claims. By the way, I'm not speaking of claims to territory...I don't think it's necessary for us to deal with the issue of whether one can make a claim to the land itself, as long as one has the exclusive right to use it."^[8]

The last effort culminated in June 2018 after eight years of negotiations,^[7] when the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) held a high-level meeting that tried to produce a consensus on a framework of laws for the sustainable development of outer space, but it also failed to do so^[7] when S. Neil Hosenball, who is the NASA General Counsel and chief US negotiator for the Moon Treaty, decided that negotiation of the rules of the international regime should be delayed until the feasibility of exploitation of lunar resources has been established.^[9]

If rights to economic benefits cannot be guaranteed, there will be little if any private investment.^[10] So seeking clearer regulatory conditions and guidelines,^[11] private companies in the US prompted the US government and legalized space mining in 2015 by introducing the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015.^[12] Similar national legislations legalizing extraterrestrial appropriation of resources are now being replicated by other nations, including Luxembourg, Japan, China, India and Russia.^[13] While the "national" treaty explicitly allows commercial mining, other experts argue that these new national laws are inconsistent with the Moon Treaty and customary international law.^{[13][14][15][16]} Other experts affirm that the Moon Treaty does allow commercial mining, after creating the needed international regulations.^[7] This has created a controversy on claims and on mining rights for profit.^[16][11][7]

Ratification

The treaty was finalized in 1979 and, after satisfying the condition requiring 5 ratifying states, it entered into force for the ratifying parties in 1984. As of January 2019, 18 states are parties to the treaty,^[1] seven of which ratified the agreement and the rest acceded.^[1][17] Four additional states have signed but not ratified the treaty.^[1][17] The L5 Society and others successfully opposed ratification of the treaty by the United States Senate.^[18][19]

Provisions

The Moon Treaty proposes to establish an "international regime" or "framework of laws" that apply to the Moon and to other celestial bodies within the Solar System, including orbits around or other trajectories to or around them.^[3][7]

The Moon Treaty lays several provisions outlined in 21 articles.^[3] In Article 1, the treaty makes a declaration that the Moon should be used for the benefit of all states and all peoples of the international community.^[20] It reiterates that lunar resources are "not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."^[20] It also expresses a desire to prevent the Moon from becoming a source of international conflict, so that the resources should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. To those ends, the treaty lays several provisions, and some of these are paraphrased below:^[3]

• Bans any military use of celestial bodies, including weapon testing, nuclear weapons in orbit, or military bases. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. (Article 3.4)
• Provides a framework of laws to establish an international cooperation regime, including appropriate procedures, to govern the responsible exploitation of natural resources of the Moon. (Article 11.5)^[21]
• Bans altering the environmental balance of celestial bodies and requires that states take measures to prevent accidental contamination of the environments of celestial bodies, including Earth. (Article 7.1)
• The orderly and safe use of the natural lunar resources with an equitable sharing by all state parties in the benefits derived from those resources. (Article 11.7)
• The placement of personnel or equipment on or below the surface shall not create a right of ownership. (Article 11)
• There shall be freedom of scientific research and exploration and use on the Moon by any party without discrimination of any kind. (Article 6) Samples obtained during research activities, are hoped to be made available to all countries and scientific communities for research. (Article 6.2)
• Any areas or regions reported to have a special scientific interest, shall be designated as international scientific preserves. (Article 7.3)
• Shall promptly inform the United Nations and the public of any phenomena which could endanger human life or health, as well as of any indication of extraterrestrial life. (Article 5.3)
• State parties shall ensure that non-governmental entities under their jurisdiction shall engage in activities on the Moon only under the authority and continuing supervision of the appropriate state party. (Article 14)
• All parties shall inform the United Nations as well as the public, of their activities concerned with the exploration and use of the Moon. (Article 5)
• Any state party to this agreement may propose amendments to the agreement. (Article 17)

When compared with the Outer Space Treaty, it reiterates most provisions, and adds two new concepts in order to address the exploitation of natural resources in outer space: to apply the concept of 'common heritage of mankind' to outer space activities, and to have the participating countries produce a regime that lays the appropriate procedures for orderly mining.^[6] Multiple conferences produced no consensus on these two items.

Legal status

The current imprecision of the agreement generated various interpretations,^[20][22] and it is cited as the main reason it was not ratified by most parties.^[22][23] The agreement was ratified by few countries, which has been described as a failure ^[19] and without fruition.^[6] Only one country (India) with independent spaceflight capabilities has signed (but not ratified) the treaty. An expert in space law and economics thinks that the treaty would need to offer adequate provisions against any one company acquiring a monopoly position in the world minerals market, while avoiding "the socialization of the Moon."^[24] Another expert commends the treaty as a germinal legal framework for developing the needed laws, rather than a finished set of detailed laws.^[25]

While the treaty reiterates the prohibition of sovereignty of "any part" of space, it proposes that the exploitation of resources shall be governed by an international regime (Article 11.5), but there has been no consensus establishing these laws.^[22] S. Neil Hosenball, who is the NASA General Counsel and chief US negotiator for the Moon Treaty, decided in 2018 that negotiation of the rules of this international regime should be delayed until the feasibility of exploitation of lunar resources has been established.^[9] A legal expert stated in 2011 that the international issues "would probably be settled during the normal course of space exploration."^[6]

In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order called "Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources." The order emphasizes that "the United States does not view outer space as a 'global commons" and calls the Moon Agreement a "a failed attempt at constraining free enterprise."^[26][27]

List of parties

State[1][2]	Signed	Deposited	Method
Armenia		19 Jan 2018	Accession
Australia		7 Jul 1986	Accession
Austria	21 May 1980	11 Jun 1984	Ratification
Belgium		29 Jun 2004	Accession
Chile	3 Jan 1980	12 Nov 1981	Ratification
Kazakhstan		11 Jan 2001	Accession
Kuwait		28 Apr 2014	Accession
Lebanon		12 Apr 2006	Accession
Mexico		11 Oct 1991	Accession
Morocco	25 Jul 1980	21 Jan 1993	Ratification
Netherlands	27 Jan 1981	17 Feb 1983	Ratification
Pakistan		27 Feb 1986	Accession
Peru	23 Jun 1981	23 Nov 2005	Ratification
Philippines	23 Apr 1980	26 May 1981	Ratification
Saudi Arabia		18 Jul 2012	Accession
Turkey		29 Feb 2012[28]	Accession
Uruguay	1 Jun 1981	9 Nov 1981	Ratification
Venezuela		3 Nov 2016	Accession

List of signatories

State[1][2]	Signed
France	29 Jan 1980
Guatemala	20 Nov 1980
India	18 Jan 1982
Romania	17 Apr 1980

See also

• Outer Space Treaty
• Treaty on Open Skies
• United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

References

External links

Works related to Moon Treaty at Wikisource

• International Institute of Space Law - promotes the expansion of the rule of law for the peaceful use of outer space.
• Treaty Text — "Agreement Governing The Activities Of States On the Moon And Other Celestial Bodies" (1979)
• Official Treaty Site — United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), including versions of the treaty in several languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.