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Serhii Kuznietsov
Status obligations of a “ag state”: counteraction to unauthorized broadcasting from the high seas
Additionally, Arend (2009) notes: “When I teach the law of the sea, we 
always spend some time discussing the heinous crimes that are prohibited 
on  the  high  seas.  Some  of  them  are  quite  familiar  –  piracy,  slave  trade, 
narcotics tracking. But there is one outlawed activity that is normally not 
so familiar to the students – pirate broadcast”. Robertson (1982) proposed 
the application of international legal concepts in order to bring pirate radio 
stations under state control.
The  provision  of  the  “UNCLOS’82”,  which  prescribes  that  all  States 
shall cooperate in the suppression of “an unauthorized broadcasting 
from  the  high  seas”  (hereinafter  referred  to  as  “UBHS”)  “have  become 
a  new  in  international  law  of  the  sea”  (Balobanov  et  al.,  1986)  and  the 
legal  international  problems  related  to  the  suppression  of  “UBHS”  were 
investigated  by  Kovalev  (2003),  Byers  (2004),    Kolodkin  (Kolodkin  et 
al., 2007), Peters (2014); Dubner and Arias (Dubner & Arias., 2017), Ong 
and Shatat (Ong et al., 2021);  Proelß (2021), Williams (2021), Kuznietsov 
(2020)  and many others. Nevertheless, certain marine scientists have not 
paid due attention to the matter (Kolodkin et al., 1984; Blishchenko, 1988; 
Parkinson, 1991; Shchipzov, 1995; Shemiyakin, 2002; Skaridov, 2006). 
Further, Antzelevich (2013) have researched international legal 
problems of modern merchant shipping and have not found among them 
the problem of suppression of “UBHS”. 
Pavlova,  Polunina,  Tkalych,  Mankovskyi,  and  Zubair  (2020)  studied 
the problems of the obligations of states in the context of environmental 
security of the oceans, which can also be attributed to the «genuine link» 
conception. Thus, we see the possibility and importance of studying 
the  modern  international  legal  regime  of  suppression  of  “UBHS”  as 
the  suppression  of  illegal  use  of  the  “ag  vessels”  and  the  obligations  of 
suppression as the status obligations of a “ag State”.
2. Methodology
The methodology used are systematic and formal-legal methods, as well 
as methods of analyses and synthesis.
We applied the system method to show the place of the norms of certain 
international conventions, as well as multilateral and bilateral, in the 
modern international legal regime of the counteraction to the “UBHS”. In 
this  sense,  we  have  considered  that  “UBHS”  is  an  illegal  use  of  the  “ag 
vessels” and there are the status obligations of a “ag State”, inter alia, to 
suppress the abovementioned using of ships, which are the obligations to 
form an integral part of the “genuine link” conception. Thus, the purpose 
of our study was to investigate modern international legal regime of the 
suppression of “UBHS”.