OpenStreetMap
hi!
my english is not good enough and id did not anything about political sitiuation - see (http://www.openstreetmap.org/note/183654#c366995)
British Territorial Waters, Gibraltar.
Someone is making a petty political statement on this map by removing Gibraltar’s Territorial Waters, recognised by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in order to support an invalid and unjustified claim by Spain.
British waters can legally extend to the full 12nm as per UNCLOS, but in practice only 3nm is officially British.
Spain’s lack of recognition of British Gibraltar Territorial waters is utterly irrelevant and has no basis in logic or legality.
Please correct this, this should be a site to provide accurate mapping and not a platform for people to further state propaganda.
please check !
Discussion
Comment from 4rch on 16 June 2014 at 21:29
This case should be discussed between the spanish and UK mappers.
The OSMF has released an document about how to handle disputed territories: http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf The “on the ground rule” should be used in such cases.
One example: Mauritius claims sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago (which is currently controlled by the UK) –> in OSM these islands are mapped as UK territory.
UNCLOS isn’t right here. Each country could submit its point of view to the UN. There is no agreement between Spain and the UK and therefore the area is disputed. The UN doesn’t recognise any boundaries. Some submissions to the UN are very controversial, for example the official boundary of the Philippines. The submissions of Spain and UK could be found here: http://www.un.org/Depts/los/LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/europe.htm
If the claim of Spain is justified or not we couldn’t say. This is what a court has to clarify or the two countries make an agreement.
Comment from 4rch on 16 June 2014 at 21:39
There’s an Wikipedia article on this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputed_status_of_Gibraltar#Territorial_waters
Comment from redsteakraw on 17 June 2014 at 02:19
This is simple, ground truth who controls the area? OSM doesn’t care what is on paper on some bureaucrats table ground truth is king. Now if the UK has a presence there controlling the area then it should be tagged as part of the UK, if Spain is controlling the area then Spain should be tagged as controlling it. If the UN it’s opinion amounts to the opinion of a cockroach compared to ground truth.
Comment from Govanus on 24 June 2014 at 17:18
Looking at the map as it is on OSM today the La Linea de la Concepcion marked on the west side of the pininsular reclaimed harbour works in Spain running suspicious along close to a boundry into the sea open water in the waters controled by the Gibraltarian Goverment. The site is frequentend oftern by Royal Naval ships and submarines and so the idea of their being nothing going on in the water around there would be week Naval vesels have been to police