The Area Is Ours: We Must Show Up (IDDS 2026)

Today, 1 November, we mark the second International Day of the Deep Seabed — a day to reflect on our common heritage and the opportunities the deep sea holds.

This journey did not start last year.

It started on 1 November 1967, when Ambassador Arvid Pardo of Malta stood before the United Nations General Assembly and told the powerful nations a simple truth that African States have long championed: what belongs to no one belongs to everyone. From that speech came the principle of the Common Heritage of Humankind. From that principle came Part XI of UNCLOS and the International Seabed Authority.

Fellow Africans, for those who may not know: when we say “The Area,” we mean the deep seabed beyond 200 nautical miles from our shores — beyond our Exclusive Economic Zones, beyond our continental shelves. It is the ocean floor that no flag can claim: more than half of the world’s seabed. And the law is clear: its wealth, its minerals, its biodiversity, and its knowledge belong to all humankind, with particular consideration for developing States.

Today, I invite every African coastal State — from Mauritania to Angola, from Kenya to South Africa — to come and view your EEZ on Enatlas: africa.enatlas.io

Select your country on the map and use Enatlas 1.0 to see where your country ends and where our common heritage begins. Come and see the Area that belongs to your children.

In the case of Ghana, you will see all the activity and infrastructure on our continental shelf: the Jubilee and TEN Fields, the positions of our three FPSOs, the gas pipelines that fuel our power plants, the West African Gas Pipeline extending from Nigeria, and more importantly, the submarine cables carrying the internet to the device on which you are reading this. All of this happens well within our EEZ.

But when you zoom out, that deep blue expanse beyond the line — that is what we celebrate today.

In Kingston, Jamaica, at the International Seabed Authority, diplomats, scientists, and engineers are writing the rules that will determine how we mine and how we equitably benefit from the mineral resources beyond that line.

The framers of UNCLOS extended an open invitation to the whole world: the benefits of that seabed would be held in trust for all humankind, not only for those with the capacity to mine it.

Yet while other countries have sent dedicated scientists and legal experts to the ISA, Ghana has added this critical duty to the already heavy portfolio of our UN diplomats in New York — diplomats who are invited to the table only after the menu has been set.

This strategy not only denies us the opportunity to learn from and participate fully in the diplomatic, scientific, and technological conversations at the ISA; it painfully betrays the memory of our own Ambassador Nii Allotey Odunton, who dedicated 30 years of his career to this organization and rose to lead it as Secretary-General from 2009 to 2017. He did not just build a formidable career; he gave Africa a voice at the ISA. Other countries may be able to excuse such absence. Ghana cannot.

On this note, I call on the Government of Ghana to appoint a Special Representative to the ISA — someone who understands the deep seabed and the value chains that depend on it. Someone who can push for reforms so that bodies like the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf make greater use of new mapping technologies, such as those we are developing at Enatlas, to clear decades of backlog.

Because we cannot manage what we cannot properly map, and we cannot claim what we cannot define.

The Area is ours. Let us show up for it.