UN General Assembly
1974

58. People are forgetting that the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, the first stage of which was held at Caracas this summer, had as its origin the need for the sea-bed and the ocean floor beyond the limits of national jurisdiction and the subsoil thereof to be used for peaceful purposes and to be exploited for the benefit of mankind, so as to promote the development of the weakest countries and avert the dangers of economic imbalances arising out of the illicit, one-sided enrichment of those nations that are technically and financially most powerful. This implies that the sea-bed under national jurisdiction is for the use and benefit of the coastal State and that the work of the Conference had chiefly to concentrate on the establishment of a legal regime and an administrative mechanism applicable to the exploitation of the vast wealth of the high seas for the benefit of mankind.