In international maritime law, right of visit (also right of visitation, right of search) allows a belligerent warship during wartime to stop and board a neutral merchant ship in order to verify that the ship nationality matches the declared one and its operation does not break a naval blockade, does not involve contraband, and does not provide non-neutral services to the enemy. The use of word "visit" probably refers to a misunderstanding of the French word visite, which in this context means search. The visit is customarily made by a warship's boat that brings onboard of the merchant vessel an officer in charge and his assistant, armed with no more than sidearms. Alternatively, the commander of the warship might summon the merchant shipmaster aboard the warship with certain requested paperwork. During wartime, the right can be exercised by any commissioned ship or aircraft of a belligerent in both high seas and in the territorial waters of the belligerent or its enemies. During peacetime or to non-belligerents, a right of visit does not apply, with the exceptions laid out in the Article 110 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS): suspicion of piracy, slavery, unlawful broadcasting, or in case of suspicion that the nationality of the merchant ship is actually the same as the one of warship or the merchant ship has no nationality.
Agreements States are, naturally, free to enter bilateral or multilateral agreements that provide prior consent to a visit of a merchant ship of a signatory state by a warship of another signatory. This cooperation might be essential for preventing unlawful fishing, migrant smuggling, and the trafficking of narcotics. For example, the 1995 Council of Europe Agreement on Illicit Traffic by Sea permits boarding the ships of other signatories with prior authorization. These agreements are not necessarily reciprocal, for example, the 1981 agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom allows US warship to board British-flagged ships in certain regions of high seas (Caribbean, the American Gulf, and areas of Atlantic Ocean) with no reciprocity provided to the United Kingdom. United States, with its outsized bargaining power was able to secure very beneficial terms in agreements with Belize, Liberia, Panama, Cyprus and the Marshall Islands: US can board ships flying the flags of these countries upon requesting a permission and not receiving a rejection within a two-hour window. The obviously inadequate time allocated to signatories makes the notification in this case at best a "window-dressing" for the state sovereignty. The 1988 Vienna Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, while building upon UNCLOS, did not include a right to visit foreign vessels suspected of running the narcotic trade, but established a procedure of requesting an ad-hoc permission from another state. The Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988 and subsequent Protocols introduced additional exceptions. This Convention was developed in order to resolve jurisdictional issues that surfaced after the murder of an American citizen onboard Achille Lauro, an Italian vessel, in Egyptian territorial waters. The Proliferation Security Initiative was established by the United States in 2003 and includes more than 100 countries that agreed on a (non-binding) Statement of Interdiction Principle with the purpose of counterproliferation. It is unclear how its principles can apply beyond the territorial waters of signatories or interfere with right of the innocent passage. As some commenters noted, the transit of the proliferation material does not necessarily can be considered "prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state" when the intended use of the weapons occurs at a faraway destination, not during the transit.
Background The principle of freedom of the high seas essentially prohibits "interference in peacetime by ships flying one national flag with ships flying the flag of other nationalities". The right of visit is the most significant exception to this basic principle. The four-hundred-year-old concept of mare liberum necessitates limiting jurisdiction of a particular state on the high seas to the ships under its own flag: "no nation can exercise a right of visitation and search upon the common and unappropriated parts of the sea, save only on the belligerent claim" (Le Louis case, 1817). "Any freedom that is to be exercised in the interests of all entitled to enjoy it, must be regulated" (International Law Commission, 1958), so to safeguard the freedom of the seas for every state, certain restrictions on its exercise are inevitable.
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