It's a good point, because there are actually two sections of the NAFO amendments, sections 14 and 15. Section 14 deals with the objection procedures. It sets up a panel to review objections. Section 15 deals with dispute settlement. Section 15 reflects or basically refers what already exists under customary international law. You can send a dispute to the Law of the Sea tribunal under UNFA or the Law of the Sea.
We could do that now. We could have done it five years ago. It's there. So all of that binding aspect has always been there, and it's there whether it's in NAFO or not.
The objection procedure is not binding in any way at all. All it does is set up a panel to review. The panel reports. A two-thirds vote is required to adopt any new measure if there's a change, and if the party that originally objected doesn't like the new decision, it can object again and the whole thing starts over. In the process, you just run out the clock, and the year is quickly over before anything happens. Then parties have to decide whether they want to bring it to article 15 and actually make it a binding dispute settlement process by bringing it to an international tribunal. That takes years and costs millions of dollars.