Global Sumud Flotilla and the Heritage of Maritime Law

Member of the research programme group Heritage on the Margins, Nataša Rogelja Caf, took part in the PopMedSus project (a staff exchange programme connecting researchers from Spain, Germany, Slovenia, and China). In October 2025, she went on a one-month exchange to Barcelona, at Ramon Llull University, from where she wrote an article for Saturday Supplement of Delo about the Global Sumud Flotilla – the largest civil society maritime mission of our time, consisting of more than forty vessels carrying around five hundred activists from around the world, particularly from the Global South.

The flotilla departed from Barcelona on 31 August this year, and most of the boats were unlawfully intercepted in early October on the open sea by Israeli vessels. Their journey not only draws attention to the catastrophic consequences of the genocide in Gaza and the violations of fundamental human rights, but also highlights breaches of the legal principles governing navigation on the high seas. The Israeli military intervention took place in international waters, approximately 130 nautical miles from Gaza, in the so-called “free space” of the sea – a concept named by Europeans during the colonial era, but one that today, in the context of the 21st century, is clearly defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This international treaty sets out the rules of conduct regarding territorial waters, exclusive economic zones, the continental shelf, the right of innocent passage of ships through foreign waters, the freedom of the high seas, as well as mechanisms for resolving disputes between states. In Slovenia, UNCLOS is best known in connection with the maritime border issue between Slovenia and Croatia.

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