Constantinople Convention 1888
The Convention respecting the Free Navigation of the Suez Maritime Canal, and why a canal's openness rests on treaty rather than on the law of the sea.
The Convention respecting the Free Navigation of the Suez Maritime Canal was signed at Constantinople on 29 October 1888. Article I, as published by the Suez Canal Authority itself, provides that the Suez Maritime Canal shall always be free and open, in time of war as in time of peace, to every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag.
The Convention matters because a canal is not a strait. Part III of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea reaches natural straits between two parts of the high seas or exclusive economic zone; the Suez Canal is an artificial cut through Egyptian territory and is internal water, so its openness rests on this treaty and on Egypt’s own undertakings rather than on any UNCLOS navigational right.
The full article will cover the Convention’s provisions, its survival through the 1956 nationalization, the Egyptian declarations that followed, and its standing today alongside the Authority’s own governing decrees.