Internal resolution of the issue of sovereignty in a minerals regime has no legal effect upon the rights and interests of the international community. Diplomats, scientists and government officials are now more ready to concede that some form of external accommodation must be made. Assertions of common heritage over Antarctic resources cannot be ignored, if only because of the power of the United Nations (UN) to develop a rival regime creating international discord and rendering unworkable any regime adopted by the Consultative Parties.

The notion that the United Nations should have some role in Antarctica is of long standing. Proposals for United Nations involvement were made after the Second World War and again by India in 1956. It was not, however, until September 1982 that the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir, raised the issue in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in which he called for a meeting to ‘define the problem of these uninhabited lands’. He alleged that the Antarctic Treaty was a neocolonial document which ‘does not reflect the true feelings of the members of the United Nations’. He suggested further that all claimants to Antarctic territorial sovereignty ‘must give up their claims so that either the United Nations can administer these lands or the present occupants act as trustees for the nations of the world’.

In the following year, Malaysia successfully argued for Antarctica to be included on the agenda for the General Assembly. After debate, a resolution was adopted calling upon the Secretary-General to conduct a comprehensive, factual and objective study on Antarctica and to report back in 1984.