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During Thursday’s session, President Sebastián Piñera announced that in the coming days they will send a claim on the submarine territory – Continental Platform – of the Province of Easter Island before the United Nations Boundary Commission, also anticipating that next year they will do the same with the Chilean Antarctic submarine territory.
“Today we want to talk about how we are expanding, safeguarding and protecting our sovereignty on our Continental Shelf. During the 210 years of independent life, the cause of sovereignty and territorial integrity has been a national cause that has received great contributions and made important progress, ”said the President.
He added that they will give “A new and important step (…) and we are taking this step to protect and safeguard our sovereignty over our Continental Shelf”.
“What is the Continental Shelf? It is the underwater territory that is generated by the natural extension of our territory under the sea. On this platform Chile has sovereignty to carry out exploration, protection and use of its resources, also in accordance with what is established by international law and the United Nations convention on the right to the sea ”, he said.
He also mentioned that “In the next few days we are going to deliver to the United Nations as a country our first partial presentation of the extended Continental Shelf of the Province of Easter Island, which is made up of the Easter Islands – whose historical name is Rapa Nui, and there is a constitutional reform to recover it— and Isla Salas y Gómez, whose historical name is Motu Motiro Hiva “.
“What is the objective of this presentation? That the United Nations Boundary Commission validate the extension of our Continental Shelf in the Province of Easter Island, beyond 200 nautical miles, that is why we are going to present to that commission the results of more than 10 years of extensive and difficult scientific studies of biometrics, biophysics, of our seabed ”, he assured.
In that line, he indicated that “These studies certify the enormous extension of the extended Continental Platform of our country in the marine areas that surround the Province of Easter Island. Our studies have shown that the movements of the Nazca Plate over millions of years created a submerged mountain chain of volcanoes, similar to the elevations we know in the Andes Mountains ”.
“This mountain range has formed our seabed and constitutes our Continental Shelf of Salas y Gómez Island, which exceeds 350 miles and could even extend up to 700 miles,” he argued.
Regarding the meaning of the foregoing, the President explained that they translate into “that Chile has sovereign rights over an area of 550 thousand km². This is equivalent to the entire continental Chilean territory between Arica and Aysén, to have a proportion of the territory that we are recovering and protecting through the Continental Shelf ”.
“I also want to announce (…) that next year we are going to deliver to that same United Nations commission a partial presentation on the extended Continental Shelf of the Chilean Antarctic territory, in order to strengthen and protect our sovereign rights, not only around the Salas and Gómez islands and Easter Island, but also our Continental Shelf in the Chilean Antarctic territory and its marine spaces ”, he declared.
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