What is FONOP? Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP)

 Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP)

what is fonop

Freedom of Navigation Operations involves passages conducted by the USNavy through waters claimed by coastal nations as their exclusive territory.

According to the US Department of Defense (DoD), the FON program has existed for 40 years, and “continuously reaffirmed the United States’ policy of exercising and asserting its navigation and overflight rights and freedoms around the world”.

These “assertions communicate that the United States does not acquiesce to the excessive maritime claims of other nations, and thus prevents those claims from becoming accepted in international law”.

Background:-

● India’s domestic laws hold any country carrying out military maneuvers in its EEZ must

provide prior notification.

● While a country has full sovereignty over its territorial waters, which end at 12

nautical miles from the coast, it only has special rights in exploration and use of

marine resources in its EEZ, which stretch to 200 nautical miles from the baseline.

What’s the issue?

● The US said India’s requirement of prior consent is inconsistent with international laws and the “freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs)”.

● The US which has not ratified the UNCLOS unlike India, China and many other

countries do regularly conduct FONOPs in the contentious South China Sea to

challenge China’s aggressive territorial claims as well as in other areas including the Indian Ocean Region.

What’s the concern now?

● The “tone and tenor of the aggressive public the declaration” of FONOPs in India’s EEZ, at a time when the US is seeking India’s closer cooperation through the Quad and other mechanisms to foster “credible deterrence” against China in the Indo-Pacific, raised the hackles of the Indian security establishment