Parting the Waves: Claims to Maritime Jurisdiction and the Division of Ocean Space
This article casts aside traditional obsessions and examines the development and present state of coastal State claims to maritime jurisdiction, the overlapping claims to maritime space that have inevitably resulted from the significant extension of maritime claims in recent decades, and thus the delimitation of maritime boundaries.
Case concerning Territorial and Maritime Dispute between Nicaragua and Honduras in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Honduras)
Boundary disputes have dogged the relationship between Honduras and Nicaragua more or less continuously since the end of Spanish colonial rule in the 1820s, and on several occasions the two states have sought third-party assistance in resolving their territorial problems. In 1906 the King of Spain was asked to arbitrate a dispute over the alignment of the eastern section of the land boundary, and in 1960 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was asked to determine whether the 1906 award − which Nicaragua had rejected – was binding (the Court decided that it was). In 1986 Nicaragua took Honduras to the ICJ over alleged cross-border activities by armed bands from Honduras, and in 1989 Nicaragua intervened in the ICJ boundary case between El Salvador and Honduras to protect its rights in the Gulf of Fonseca. The most recent legal tussle was initiated by Nicaragua in December 1999 when it asked the ICJ to determine the course of the single maritime boundary between the two states in the Caribbean Sea. Following two rounds of written pleadings and oral hearings in March 2007, the Court delivered its Judgment on 8 October 2007.
The Eritrea-Yemen Arbitration: First Stage—The Law of Title to Territory Re-Averred
In December 1995 Eritrean and Yemeni armed forces clashed in one of the islands situated off the coast of these two States in the Red Sea (Greater Hanish1). Behind the incident was a dispute concerning, inter alia, the territorial sovereignty over several uninhabited islands in the area, the definition of the maritime boundary between the two States and the use of the waters surrounding the islands by fishermen of both States.2 Undoubtedly, this dispute is deeply rooted in the history of the two States, and their peoples.