International Waters - International Waterways

International Waterways

Several international treaties have established freedom of navigation on semi-enclosed seas.

• The Copenhagen Convention of 1857 opened access to the Baltic by abolishing the Sound Dues and making the Danish Straits an international waterway free to all military and commercial shipping.
• Several conventions have opened the Bosporus and Dardanelles to shipping. The latest, the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits, maintains the straits' status as an international waterway.

Other international treaties have opened up rivers, which are not traditionally international waterways.

• The Danube River is an international waterway so that landlocked Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia (and the southern parts of Germany, itself not landlocked) can have secure access to the Black Sea.