A nation's internal waters covers all water and waterways on the landward side of the baseline from which a nation's territorial waters is defined. It includes waterways such as rivers and canals, and sometimes the water within small bays. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the coastal nation is free to set laws, regulate any use, and use any resource. Foreign vessels have no right of passage within internal waters, and this lack of right to innocent passage is the key difference between internal waters and territorial waters.
Famous quotes containing the words internal and/or waters:
“I have been amazed by the Anglo-Saxon’s lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions of the Negroes, and for that matter, any non-Anglo-Saxon peoples within our borders, above the class of unskilled labor.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“The seeds of the life of fishes are everywhere disseminated, whether the winds waft them, or the waters float them, or the deep earth holds them; wherever a pond is dug, straightway it is stocked with this vivacious race. They have a lease of nature, and it is not yet out.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)