The diplomatic and legal confrontation between Argentina and the United Kingdom escalated to the international stage on Monday. In a message posted on his official Twitter account and accompanied by a formal statement from the President's Office , Javier Milei announced the initiation of international arbitration proceedings against the British administration under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and imposed a peremptory deadline of 14 days to effectively halt the Sea Lion oil project.

“I have instructed the Foreign Ministry and our legal teams to initiate international arbitration against the United Kingdom for the illegal plundering of our resources through the Sea Lion Project in the North Malvinas Basin. If the United Kingdom does not halt this illegitimate exploitation within two weeks, we will take the matter to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. THE MALVINAS ARE ARGENTINE and are defended with actions, not words , ” the head of state declared on his social media accounts.

The document issued by the Presidency details that the legal route chosen corresponds to the arbitration procedure regulated in Annex VII of UNCLOS to resolve disputes on the interpretation or application of the maritime treaty.

The two-week ultimatum and the Hamburg route

According to the terms of the official notification, the Argentine State ordered Downing Street to, within a peremptory period of two weeks , "adopt the necessary measures to prevent the start or continuation of activities aimed at the exploitation of hydrocarbon resources on the Argentine Continental Shelf" .

The warning issued by the Casa Rosada stipulates that, unless there is an effective suspension of the work illegitimately awarded to the consortium of Navitas Petroleum and Rockhopper Exploration , the Argentine Republic will directly request the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) —based in Hamburg, Germany— to issue urgent provisional measures to safeguard sovereign rights over its maritime and insular platform against the “irreversible and irreparable” damage caused by the extractive advance.

Rejection of the colonial retaliation and a new front against Thales UK

The presidential statement strongly criticizes the official response that the British delegation recorded in the minutes of the UN General Assembly . The Casa Rosada emphasized that Westminster's claims—which attempted to justify itself by citing the 2013 referendum and classifying the islands as a mere overseas territory—are inapplicable: “The purported designation of the Malvina Islands as a 'British Overseas Territory' and the unilateral referendum held in 2013, which is not internationally recognized, do not alter the existence or the subject matter of the sovereignty dispute recognized by the United Nations.”

Likewise, the presidential document opened a new chapter of conflict in the area of air transport sovereignty and logistics:

The decision to resort to UNCLOS arbitration and the Hamburg Court seeks to elevate the dispute to the highest international jurisdictional level. Following the recent five-year extension of licenses and the summonses issued by the Comodoro Py federal courts against oil executives, the Casa Rosada is formalizing an international legal pincer movement aimed at increasing the financial cost of the Sea Lion project in the global insurance and credit markets and testing multilateral mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of disputes in the South Atlantic.