Mr. Serpa Soares opens the Thirty-Seventh session of the CLCS.

"On 9 February 2015, the United Nations Legal Counsel, Mr. Serpa Soares, addressed the first plenary part of the 37th session of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) at its opening meeting. Mr. Lawrence Folajimi Awosika of Nigeria, who serves as its Chairman, invited the Legal Counsel to address the Commission. The CLCS is a body established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in order to consider the data and other material submitted by coastal States concerning the outer limits of the continental shelf in areas where those limits extend beyond 200 nautical miles, and to make recommendations in accordance the Convention.

The thirty-seventh session of the CLCS started on 2 February 2015, and will conclude on 20 March 2015. The two plenary parts of the session will be held from 9 to 13 February and from 9 to 13 March, while the remainder of the time will be devoted to the technical examination of submissions at the Geographic Information Systems laboratories and other technical facilities of the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Office of Legal Affairs."