Pace International Law Review Volume 8 Issue 2 Spring 1996 Article 5 April 1996 Sanctuary for the Whales: Will This Be the Demise of the International Whaling Commission or a Viable Strategy for the Twenty-First Century? Judith Berger-Eforo Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pilr Recommended Citation Judith Berger-Eforo, Sanctuary for the Whales: Will This Be the Demise of the International Whaling Commission or a Viable Strategy for the Twenty-First Century?, 8 Pace Int'l L. Rev. 439 (1996) Available at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pilr/vol8/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at DigitalCommons@Pace. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pace International Law Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Pace. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. NOTES SANCTUARY FOR THE WHALES: WILL THIS BE THE DEMISE OF THE INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION OR A VIABLE STRATEGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY? I. INTRODUCTION On May 26, 1994 the International Whaling Commission' voted to create an Antarctic sanctuary for the whales. 2 This new policy essentially completed the transformation of the IWC from an international organization established to set quotas for commercial whaling, to an environmental watchdog group.3 In- itially, the IWC regulated the active whaling nations by divid- 1 The International Whaling Commission [hereinafter IWC] was created by the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, Dec. 2, 1946, 62 Stat. 1716 [hereinafter ICRW]. The IWC was originally established as a voluntary union of the whaling nations to empower an international agency to set quotas and catch limitations of the number of whales to be hunted.