Annex II

In the law of the sea, Annex II most commonly refers to Annex II of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1982), titled "Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf." Read together with Article 76 of the Convention, Annex II creates and governs the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), a 21-member expert body of geologists, geophysicists and hydrographers elected by States Parties for five-year terms on the basis of equitable geographical representation. Its function is to examine the scientific and technical data submitted by a coastal State seeking to establish the outer limits of its continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles, and to make recommendations on those limits. Under Article 76(8), limits established by a coastal State "on the basis of these recommendations shall be final and binding."

Annex II prescribes the procedural architecture in detail. Article 4 imposes the celebrated ten-year deadline: a coastal State intending to claim an extended shelf must submit particulars to the Commission within ten years of UNCLOS entering into force for it (a deadline that States Parties later softened in 2001 and 2008 to run from the adoption of the Commission's Scientific and Technical Guidelines). Article 3 defines the Commission's mandate, and crucially preserves the rule that its work is "without prejudice to matters relating to delimitation of boundaries between States with opposite or adjacent coasts" — the CLCS rules on the seaward extent of the shelf, not on competing sovereignty. The Commission operates through subcommissions, deliberates in private, and cannot consider a submission subject to an unresolved dispute unless the parties consent.

By 2026 the CLCS had received roughly ninety full submissions, generating some of the most consequential maritime claims of the era. Russia's 2001 and revised 2015 submissions over the Arctic seabed — including the Lomonosov and Mendeleev Ridges and the North Pole — remain under examination, as do competing Arctic submissions from Denmark (Greenland) and Canada. India lodged its submission in 2009; Bangladesh's claim was shaped by the ITLOS Bay of Bengal judgment (Bangladesh v. Myanmar, 2012), the first international ruling to delimit a continental shelf beyond 200 nm. The Commission's recommendations on Australia, Mexico and others have already become final and binding limits. Separately, candidates should not confuse this with "Annex II" lists appearing in other treaties — notably the CTBT Annex 2, listing the 44 States whose ratification is required for entry into force.

For the international-law paper, Annex II is tested on the institutional triangle of UNCLOS dispute-settlement and maritime-zone bodies — distinguishing the CLCS (Annex II, continental-shelf limits), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea / ITLOS (Annex VI), and the International Seabed Authority (Part XI, the Area). Examiners favour questions probing the ten-year deadline, the "final and binding" effect of Article 76(8), and the deliberate separation between delimitation (boundary between States) and delineation (outer edge of the shelf), which the Commission alone advises upon. A recurring trap is conflating the CLCS with a court: it is a scientific-technical body issuing recommendations, not adjudicating sovereignty.