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)
“Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)