South Atlantic Islands Department

Islas del Atlántico Sur, officially Department of Islas del Atlántico Sur, is one of the five territorial subdivisions of the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antártida and Islas del Atlántico South in the Argentine Republic. It is made up of the Malvinas Islands and the archipelagos grouped under the name of Subantarctic South Antilles. The entire territory of the department —and its adjacent seas— are the subject of dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom, for what the Argentine administration cannot be exercised in it since the United Kingdom does it.

Sovereignty dispute

Mural in Ushuaia referring to its status as provincial capital and the department of the South Atlantic Islands.

The department is made up of four archipelagos claimed by Argentina as "an integral and indivisible part of its territory that is illegally occupied by an invading power". The archipelagos were claimed as Argentine territory through national law 26,552, sanctioned by the Argentine National Congress in November 2009 and promulgated by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in December of the same year, which details the limits of the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands, by adding an additional paragraph in article 1 of law 23,775.

ARTICLE 1 — Incorporate into Article 1 of Law 23.775 the following paragraph:

The province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands comprises: the eastern part of the Great Island of Tierra del Fuego to the limit with the Republic of Chile, the island of the States, the New Year Islands, the Falkland Islands, the Beauchêne Island, the Cormorandum and Black Rocks, the South Georgia Islands, the South Sandwich Islands, other islands, islets and rocks located in the inner waters and the territorial sea generated from those territories in accordance with Law 23,968including the islands, islets and rocks located south of the Great Island of Tierra del Fuego to the border with the Republic of Chile; the territories located in the Antarctic Argentina comprising the meridians 25° West and 74th West and the 60th South parallel, the islands, islets and rocks located between the territories comprising the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands.

The three archipelagos are under the administration of the United Kingdom, which groups the component islands of the department into three overseas territories:

• British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands: made up of the South Sandwich Islands, South Georgia Islands and isolated rock groups called Clerke and Aurora Islands;
• British Overseas Territory of the Falkland Islands: Falkland Islands;

The Falkland Islands is one of 17 territories on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories under the supervision of the United Nations Committee on Decolonization, in order to examine the situation with respect to the implementation of the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, for which the situation of the archipelago has been examined annually by the Decolonization Committee since 1965. The United Nations Organization considers it a sovereign territory still pending definition.

Official map of the Argentine continental shelf adopted by the United Nations, as a result of the 1995 Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The maritime and air spaces adjacent to the islands together with the sea bed, subsoil and the corresponding fishing rights, are also the subject of dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom.

• Marine limits according to Argentine law No. 23968 (Law on Maritime Spaces):
  • Territorial Sea: 12 MN from the base line
  • Contiguous area: 24 MN from base line
  • Exclusive economic zone: 200 MN from the base line (slide to the west with the mainland EEZ)

The continuous Argentine claim over these archipelagos of the South Atlantic has been reflected in the first transitory provision of the 1994 Constitution, which says:

The Argentine Nation ratifies its legitimate and imprescriptible sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands and the corresponding maritime and island areas, as an integral part of the national territory. The recovery of those territories and the full exercise of sovereignty, respecting the way of life of their inhabitants, and in accordance with the principles of international law, constitute a permanent and irrenunciable objective of the Argentine people.

On March 11, 2016, the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLPC) approved the presentation of Argentina's continental shelf without making any recommendations, and from that moment the limits of the territory were recognized by the international community Argentine with respect to its maritime platform in the areas not subject to disputes. On March 28, 2016, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship made a presentation on the new limits, during which it was stated that by approving the presentation, the UN acknowledged that there is a sovereignty dispute with the UK.

In cases such as these, in which there is a territorial or maritime dispute, it is established that the Commission "will not examine or qualify the presentation made by any of the States Parties to that dispute". For this reason, and already in September 2009, the Commission had determined that in accordance with the regulations, it was not in a position to examine or qualify the part of the presentation that referred to the maritime spaces of the Malvinas Islands, South Georgia. South and South Sandwich, nor to the continental shelf belonging to Antarctica. According to a private association, undisputed Argentine sovereignty recognized by the Commission (CLPC) would reach 20% of the total delimited area of 1.7 million km², that is, approximately 340,000 square kilometers.

Archipelagos

Maps of the different archipelagos that make up the department.

The sub-Antarctic South Antilles are located north of parallel 60° S, comprising the South Georgia Islands, Clerke Rocks, the South Sandwich Islands and the Aurora Islands (Black Rocks and Cormorant Islets).

The total area of the apartment varies according to the sources consulted:

According to the National Geographic Institute of Argentina, it is 16,027 km², broken down as follows:

• Falkland Islands: 11 410 km2
• South Georgia Islands, Clerke Rocks and Aurora Islands: 3560 km2
• South Sandwich Islands: 307 km2

The same data appear in the Atlas of Statistics of the government of the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antártida and Islas del Atlántico Sur.

The CIA The World Factbook 2013 attributes other areas to the archipelagos of the:

• Falkland Islands: 12 173 km2
• South Georgia Islands, South Sandwich, Clerke Rocks and Aurora Islands: 3903 km2

Population

The permanent population settled in the Falkland Islands is around 3,400 inhabitants in 2016 (excluding personnel and soldiers from the Monte Agradable Air Base and their families). These data come from the census carried out by the British government, unknown by Argentina. In addition, according to estimates by specialists in the areas of diplomacy and international politics, the number of British soldiers deployed on these islands exceeds the number of civilians.

In the Malvinas Islands is the only town in the department, called Puerto Argentino in Argentina, and Stanley for the United Kingdom. As in the other four departments of this province, a head town has not been formally assigned to it, but it is usually considered to correspond to Puerto Argentino.

Due to the British occupation of three of the archipelagos, the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of the Argentine Republic cannot take a census of their population.

History

After a hundred-year occupation by Spain, the Malvinas Islands became effective Argentine possession from November 6, 1820, when the formal takeover took place, until January 3, 1833, when they were occupied by British forces.

The department was created on April 8, 1970 when the governor of Tierra del Fuego issued Decree No. 149:

DEPARTMENT ISLAS OF THE SUD ATLANTICS: Includes the Falkland Islands, Orcadas, Georgias, Sandwich and the adjacent minor islands.

Map of the Falkland Islands with the Argentine toponymy.

The decree did not designate any head town for the department. Years later, the organic charter of the city of Ushuaia, sanctioned in 2002, reaffirmed in article 22 its status as capital of the territory, including all the archipelagos.

Map of the South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia.

The Corbeta Uruguay Scientific Station was built by Argentina on the Morrell Island of the South Tule Islands group, belonging to the South Sandwich Islands, on November 7, 1976. It was maintained until the British occupation of the base on June 20, 1982.

On April 2, 1982, the Argentine military government retook possession of the Malvinas Islands, which gave rise to the Malvinas War. On June 14, 1982, the United Kingdom recaptured the Malvinas when the Argentine forces surrendered in Puerto Argentino/Stanley, the following day the Argentine garrison on Gran Malvina Island was handed over.

The ports of Grytviken and Leith on the island of San Pedro in South Georgia were occupied by Argentine forces on April 3, 1982 and held until British recovery on April 25, 1982, in the course of Operation Paraquat.

During the Malvinas War, the Argentine military government created by secret decree no. S 681/82, of April 3, 1982, the Military Governorate of the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, reducing the territory from the department to the South Orkney archipelago. This decree was repealed by Decree No. 879/85 of May 15, 1985, which dissolved the military government and restored the limits of the South Atlantic Islands department.

With the provincialization of Tierra del Fuego AIAS, the Argentine Congress sanctioned Law 23,775 on April 26, 1990. When promulgating it, the executive branch in charge of Carlos Saúl Menem vetoed the first article, which precisely set the limits of the new province, establishing general limits through decree No. 905/1990. The law also states in its 2nd article that "in what refers to Antarctica, Malvinas, South Georgia, South Sandwich and other sub-Antarctic islands, the new province is subject to the treaties with foreign powers that the federal government celebrates, for whose ratification it will not be necessary to consult the provincial government.

Since 2007, the Argentine Foreign Ministry promoted meetings with Fuegian deputies and senators until the bill presented in July 2009 by the deputies Nélida Belaous, Leonardo Gorbacz, Rosana Bertone, Rubén Sciutto and Mariel Calchaquí was drafted, and it was sanctioned in November of that same year (with number 26,552), 19 years after the provincialization, when the Executive Branch decided to submit the question of limits "for consideration by the National Congress, as soon as possible, a substitute text".

In 2015, the Tierra del Fuego government sent a proposal to the provincial Legislature to modify the departmental limits of the province in order to "contribute to the territorial sovereignty of the Nation." The initiative was promoted by the Malvinas Question Observatory Advisory Council and establishes the political division of the province into four departments. In this proposal, the South Orcadas Islands would become part of the Argentine Antarctic department.

South Atlantic Islands Department
- It includes the Falkland Islands, the Beauchene Island, the Cormorandum and Black Rocks, the South Georgia Islands, the South Sandwich Islands, other islands, islets and rocks located in the inner waters and the territorial sea generated from those territories in accordance with the provisions of National Law 23,968.

On October 27, 2017, by law of the Legislature of the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antártida and Islas del Atántico Sur, the territorial decree 149/70 that created the Islas del Atlántico Sur department was repealed and assigned a new limit passing the Orcadas del Sur islands to the department of Antártida Argentina.

4. DEPARTMENT ISLAS OF SUR ATLANTICS:
It includes the Falkland Islands, the Beauchene Island, the Cormorandum and Black Rocks, the South Georgia Islands, the South Sandwich Islands, other islands, islets and rocks located in the inner waters and the territorial sea generated from those territories in accordance with the provisions of the National Law 23,968.