International waters

waters outside of national jurisdiction

International waters is a body of water that does not belong to any single country. "International waters" is not a defined term in international law. It is an informal term.

International boundaries.

The Convention on the High Seas 1958 defined "high seas" to mean "all parts of the sea that are not included in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a State" and "no State may validly... subject any part of them to its sovereignty".[1]

Therefore "high seas" and "international waters" share a basic idea: that no country can own them.

References

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  1. Text of CONVENTION ON THE HIGH SEAS Archived 2019-02-22 at the Wayback Machine (U.N.T.S. No. 6465, vol. 450, pp. 82–103)