The Svalbard Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Paris, is a treaty entered into on February 9, 1920 in Paris between several countries on the archipelago of Svalbard. It was included in the connection with the peace conferences after the First World War. It was not until 1925 that the provisions of the treaty on Norwegian supremacy across the archipelago were enshrined in Norwegian law through the Svalbard Act, which regulates Norway’s sovereignty and authority exercise in Svalbard. The treaty establishes “Norway’s full and unrestricted high -rethight over the Svalbardøgruppen”. The agreement gives Norway sovereignty over Svalbard; Spitsbergen and the islands around, Bjørnøya and Hopen. The treaty further states that all treaty parties should have “equally right to fishing and catch” in these areas and in their territorial waters. The law provision applies according to the treaty’s wording only within the territorial boundary, which then amounted to 4 nautical miles. However, the question of how far out the principle of equal treatment should apply is disputed. Besides Norway, the signature states were the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Sweden. More than 30 additional states have signed the treaty at a later date, including the Soviet Union in 1924. The treaty aims to secure Svalbard’s development and the peaceful utilization of natural resources there. Norway’s sovereignty is limited in such a way that the citizens of any of the states who have signed the Svalbard Treaty have equal rights to conduct business, hunting and fishing on the islands and in their territorial waters. Svalbard is a immilitarized zone. In the 1950s, the Norwegian government declared Svalbard as a neutral area, with the limitation that NATO was granted the right to intervene if the neutrality was to be violated in any way. Source: Juslexikon.no
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