We are an institutional space for integration, environmental respect, and economic development.
The Administrative Commission of the Río de la Plata (CARP) is an international organization that provides the legal framework and facilitates dialogue between the Argentine Republic and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay for the shared management of the Río de la Plata
The Río de la Plata and the Maritime Front
The Río de la Plata has a surface area of 35,500 km2 and extends for 327 km. It is the widest river in the world, reaching 227 km at its mouth and outer limit between Punta Rasa (Cape San Antonio in Argentina) and Punta del Este (Uruguay). Its inner limit is the Punta Gorda parallel at Latitude 33° 55'00" S, where it has a width of 1.7 km.
The La Plata Basin, with an area of 3,100,000 km2, is the second largest river basin in South America and the fourth largest in the world. It is made up of the sub-basins of the Paraguay, Paraná and Uruguay rivers, where the Paraná and Uruguay rivers provide more than 97% of the river flow of the Río de la Plata, the latter discharging more than 20,000 m3/s into the Atlantic Ocean.
The term "Maritime Front" identifies in the Treaty of the Río de la Plata and its Maritime Front an area in the Atlantic Ocean contiguous to the outer limit of the Río de la Plata of approximately 216,000 km2. The Maritime Front contains the Argentine-Uruguayan Common Fishing Zone.
The Treaty of the Río de la Plata and its Maritime Front
The Treaty of the Río de la Plata and its Maritime Front was signed in Montevideo on November 19, 1973 by the presidents of Argentina and Uruguay, Juan Domingo Perón and Juan María Bordaberry.
After successive agreements between the two countries, the Treaty delimited the territorial space of the Río de la Plata and established a strip of exclusive jurisdiction adjacent to the coasts of each part of the river. The aquatic space located between these strips is of common use for both countries. In the Maritime Front, it defined both the Maritime Lateral Limit and the continental shelf.
In order to lay the foundations for the broadest cooperation between the two countries and to eliminate the difficulties that could arise from any situation of legal uncertainty regarding the exercise of their equal rights, the treaty created two international organizations: the Administrative Commission of the Río de la Plata (CARP) with jurisdiction in the waters of common use of the Río de la Plata and the Joint Technical Commission of the Maritime Front (CTMFM) with action in their respective maritime jurisdictions.
