Joe finds himself in an unfair government controversy. He is told "if you don't like it, leave" by the government worker. Joe decides the most clean exit he can make is by way of the open seas as the Pacific or Atlantic ocean. Joe wants to be left at peace. 45 km / 28 miles away from the shore of his country Joe finds international waters as open seas. [1, 2] Joe boats to the open sea, and declares full independence of himself and his boat while lowering the flag on his boat. He unregisters his ship. NO! Explained here is why this is effectively illegal, as subjecting boaters to getting boarded by warships and worse. That is an international rule violation [3, 4] by all countries with a navy! People who don't fly a flag risk their ship seized by a flagged state, making the unregistering of his ship effectively illegal in that way. [4] One country announced for example their intention to seize such flagless boats as a matter of official ruling [4].
That kind of behavior is currently proactively enabled by the United Nations (UN) treaty system, because all states (both UN members and UN non-members) are asked to assist in policing the open sea. [5, 6] Furthermore, any and all nations are not clearly prohibited from enforcing their own law and add their own jurisdiction onto any ship without a flag [7], meaning not only is Joe still under the thumb of his own country but any country with a warship is invited to board and might force Joe to comply with laws applied by that warship's crew as well.
On the open seas, all people on Earth are effectively required by international law to raise and keep raised a state (nation) flag. [3, 4, 8, 9] There are about 200 states to choose from. [10] The selected flag of the ship places it under the government of the nation of that flag. That nation is then demanded by international law to exercise control over your ship. [11] Before doing that, one is furthermore required to get registered official permission from the nation to raise their flag in the first place. [12]
So, in order for Joe to leave his (former) nation's jurisdiction, he would have to get permission from another nation to raise their flag instead. That registration process costs both time and money, so is neither financially free or free of time cost. Furthermore, it is a mandate of expression, as expression is needed to complete the alternative registration process.
After leaving, there is no hospitable land left on Earth unclaimed by a nation for Joe to go to, even if he wanted to form a new nation. [13, 14, 15, 16] Despite that, leaving a nation without joining another one is deemed inherently suspicious by the most powerful body of international law, the United Nations, which says "a warship" [...] is not justified in boarding it unless there is reasonable ground for suspecting that [...] the ship is without nationality". [9]
Nations of significant power on Earth require us to be under their control without escaping easily. Furthermore, they require other nations of international water access to cooperate with them in accomplishing that objective. [5, 17] Your independence is denied in practice. Your dependence on the nations of power is mandated by international law established by the late 1900s. [3] No, you or your boat cannot simply leave the grip of your assigned government.
The consequences for breaking this flag flying rule are extreme. Firstly, you may lose property rights protection for your ship upon being declared stateless because other people are "invited" aboard your ship who are not legally bound to honor such rights. [18, 19, 20] So, your "right to have rights" is itself a challenge. [21] You are openly invited by international law to be boarded by any and all state warships [9], but then effectively subject to laws of states with a nearby warship [22], though that proposition has yet to reach the level of an international court. Enforcement of such unsettled law nevertheless occurs in practice, because state actors face no personal liability for enforcing law that is not clearly established for international and most national law [23, 24, 25], and because a peer court is at liberty to disagree with the rulings relied on here [26]. So, one can argue their human rights in international court, demanding a loose reinterpretation of the flag rule, but to date that argument is not yet accepted.
Please share your thoughts or feelings on this writing! Is the forced boarding of such independent ships wrongful monopolistic leverage by powerful nations? Do we live on a prison planet?
Definitions
"effectively illegal": Used here to mean a court has ruled against the conduct, and no peer or superior court has ruled the other way. It is not a claim that an international court has settled the matter, nor that the conduct is illegal by statute everywhere. It means the only judicial rulings to date point one direction, so the conduct is treated as illegal in practice unless and until a court disagrees. Distinct from a lawyer's "probably illegal," which predicts how a court would rule.
"International waters as open seas": Used here to mean places boats of many nations are expected to be, generally starting at 12 nautical miles (nm), expanding to almost all watercraft at 24nm as open seas, and maximizing at 200nm as high seas. This is a common sense assertion, not a legal definition.
Citations
[1] "In a zone contiguous to its territorial sea [...] the coastal State may exercise the control necessary to [...] customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations [...] The contiguous zone may not extend beyond 24 nautical miles from the [coast] baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured." — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Article 33(2). Adopted Dec 1982; entered into force Nov 1994. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention ... /part2.htm
[2] "International waters [...] which is not a legal term [...] includes the EEZ." — Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking in Fishing in International Waters, Report to Congress, U.S. Department of Justice et al. https://www.justice.gov/crt/page/file/1360366/dl
[3] "Ships shall sail under the flag of one State only and, save in exceptional cases expressly provided for in international treaties or in this Convention, shall be subject to its exclusive jurisdiction on the high seas." — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Part VII, Art. 92. Adopted Dec 1982; entered into force Nov 1994. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention ... /part7.htm
"establishing through this Convention, with due regard for the sovereignty of all States, a legal order for the seas." — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Preamble (1833 U.N.T.S. 397). Adopted Dec 1982; entered into force Nov 1994. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention ... clos_e.pdf
Note: "Ships shall sail under the flag of at most one State" would have been the clearly appropriate text for allowance of no flags. The only nuance here is that only national courts have ruled on this issue in specific to confirm the literal interpretation, without a clear ruling by international courts.
[4] "No question of comity nor of any breach of international law can arise if there is no State under whose flag the vessel sails. [...] A ship which sails the seas under no flag is a stateless ship [...] which may be seized and dealt with by any State." — Privy Council, Naim Molvan v. Attorney-General for Palestine [1948] AC 351. https://uniset.ca/other/cs2/1948AC351.html
[5] "The [United Nations] Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security." — Charter of the United Nations, Article 2(6). Signed at San Francisco, Jun 1945; entered into force Oct 1945. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text
[6] "Believing that the codification and progressive development of the law of the sea achieved in this Convention will contribute to the strengthening of peace, security, cooperation and friendly relations among all nations in conformity with the principles of justice and equal rights ... in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations as set forth in the Charter." — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Preamble. Adopted Dec 1982; entered into force Nov 1994. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention ... clos_e.pdf
[7] "International law [...] statelessness removes the jurisdictional enforcement barriers associated with exclusive flag State jurisdiction on the high seas. What remains unsettled is whether, and to what extent, any State may exercise enforcement jurisdiction over these vessels." — Just Security, "Maritime Law Enforcement on the High Seas: Authority, Jurisdiction, and the Seizure of The Skipper." 22 Dec 2025. https://www.justsecurity.org/127791/mar ... e-skipper/
"the U.S. jurisdictional practice has been more assertive for decades without any significant objections or complaints." — U.S. Naval War College, Stockton Center for International Law, International Law Studies. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/v ... ontext=ils
[8] "A ship may not change its flag during a voyage or while in a port of call, save in the case of a real transfer of ownership or change of registry." — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Part VII – High Seas, Art. 92. Adopted Dec 1982; entered into force Nov 1994. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention ... /part7.htm
[9] "a warship which encounters on the high seas a foreign ship [...] is not justified in boarding it unless there is reasonable ground for suspecting that [...] the ship is without nationality." — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Part VII, Art. 110(1) ("Right of visit"). Adopted Dec 1982; entered into force Nov 1994. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention ... /part7.htm
[10] The United Nations lists 193 member states as of Jul 2026 (with the addition of South Sudan in 2011) and two non-member states as the Holy See and Palestine. — United Nations, Member States / Non-member States. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states ; https://www.un.org/en/about-us/non-member-states
[11] "Every State shall effectively exercise its jurisdiction and control in administrative, technical and social matters over ships flying its flag." — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Part VII, Art. 94. Adopted Dec 1982; entered into force Nov 1994. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention ... /part7.htm
[12] "Every State shall fix the conditions for the grant of its nationality to ships, for the registration of ships in its territory, and for the right to fly its flag. Ships have the nationality of the State whose flag they are entitled to fly. There must exist a genuine link between the State and the ship." — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Part VII, Art. 91. Adopted Dec 1982; entered into force Nov 1994. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention ... /part7.htm
[13] "the peopling of the Oceanic Islands was the last major migration of mankind into a previously unpeopled realm." — Spate, O. H. K. The Spanish Lake. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979, p. 3. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/ ... 459544.pdf
[14] "by 1900 all island territories in the Pacific were under either direct or indirect colonial rule." — Schencking, J. Charles. "Bureaucratic Politics, Military Budgets and Japan's Southern Advance: The Imperial Navy's Seizure of German Micronesia." War in History 5, no. 3 (1998): 276–309, at 277. https://doi.org/10.1177/096834459800500303
[15] "...a small region known as Bir Tawil, adjacent to the Hala'ib Triangle, is the world's last piece of unclaimed territory [...] Outside of Antarctica, Bir Tawil is the only piece of land that is not claimed by any nation." — European Parliament. Bir Tawil | E-000502/2016 (Written question to the Commission). Jan 2016. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/do ... 02_EN.html
[16] "Groundwater, though deep and difficult to access, represents the only possible source of water supply in such an arid region. The entire area lies within a desert zone and is characterized by extreme heat and sharp temperature variations between day and night. There are no rivers or lakes in Bir Tawil, and the land has no access to the sea." — Bir Tawil Principality. "Geography of Bir Tawil: Morphology and Groundwater." Accessed 17 Jul 2026. https://birtawilprincipality.com/geogra ... bir-tawil/
[17] "Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith." — Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Art. 26 ("Pacta Sunt Servanda") (1155 UNTS 331). Signed at Vienna, May 1969; entered into force Jan 1980. https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instrume ... 1_1969.pdf
[18] "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property." — Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17(2). Proclaimed by UN General Assembly resolution 217 A (III), Dec 1948. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universa ... man-rights
[19] "The [human rights] Declaration is not a binding document [...] it carries no legal obligation." — UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "What are Human Rights?" / UDHR FAQ (General Assembly resolution 217 A). https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/u ... man-rights
[20] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-me ... cal-rights ; https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-me ... ral-rights
Note: Neither binding covenant contains any provision protecting the right to property — the UDHR's Article 17 was deliberately omitted during drafting, so the only binding UN human-rights treaties protect no property right at all. There is therefore no quote from this source as it is evidence of a negative by omission.
[21] "We became aware of the existence of a right to have rights [...] and a right to belong to some kind of organized community, only when millions of people emerged who had lost and could not regain these rights." — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), ch. 9, "The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man." https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsO ... 7/mode/2up
[22] "International law permits any nation to subject stateless vessels to its jurisdiction." — United States v. Marino-Garcia, 679 F.2d 1373, 1382 (11th Cir. 1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1117 (1983). https://openjurist.org/679/f2d/1373/uni ... o-garcia-g
[23] "Rooted in customary international law, sovereign immunity generally protects states and their officials from a range of legal proceedings in other foreign states' domestic courts." — Brookings Institution, "Sovereign Immunity: Past, Present, and Future." May 2022. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sove ... nd-future/
[24] "the International Court of Justice held that under the present state of international customary law State immunity encompasses all acta jure imperii, regardless of whether they are unlawful." — Stefania Negri, "Sovereign Immunity v. Redress for War Crimes: The Judgment of the International Court of Justice in the Case Concerning Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy)," Brill / International Community Law Review. https://brill.com/content/journals/10.1 ... 2-12341273
"The term 'acta jure imperii' refers to actions taken by a government or its subdivisions that are considered to be within their sovereign rights." — US Legal Forms, "Acta Jure Imperii: Understanding Its Legal Definition." Accessed 2024. https://legal-resources.uslegalforms.co ... re-imperii
[25] "government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights." — Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982). Jun 1982. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlow_v._Fitzgerald
Note: Cited as one example of national law as one such "domestic courts."
[26] "Higher courts bind lower courts; lower courts don't bind higher courts. Equal courts may yield to each other, but they are not bound. (Their rulings are persuasive authority to each other, not mandatory authority)." — Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute (Wex), "stare decisis." https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stare_decisis
Note: This is the doctrine of horizontal stare decisis.