The last week, we have been bombarded by various information related to the reading of the ruling of the Hague Court , produced this morning. However, we continue to see with astonishment how some public figures display widespread ignorance, not even talking about details regarding the maritime dispute between Peru and Chile, but rather about elementary questions such as what the Court is or how to write The Hague. From Spill Magisterial, an institution dedicated to social security and the revaluation of Peruvian teachers, we have offered data of interest and tools to understand this situation and not fall into absurd triumphalism or shameful voids, when asked about the subject. There are thousands of students who, starting the school year, will question us about facts, meanings and details. On this occasion we offer you a recount of the historic rulings that this international court has issued in the last 60 years, extracted from the latest edition of the weekly Hildebrandt en sus Trece (writing by journalist Giovanni Hinojosa):
UNITED KINGDOM VS NORWAY (1951):
In 1935 the Norwegian government published a regulation that decreed its right to fish exclusively in a certain area of the arctic oceans. The Norwegians thus intended to put an end to the entry of British fishing boats and, at the same time, legalize the control that their inhabitants had exercised, de facto, in those waters since time immemorial. The United Kingdom described this rule as illegal and took the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The British defended their right to fish anywhere in arctic waters. The Court ruled that the centuries of presence gave Norway a special power over the disputed area, something that the United Kingdom had admitted de facto. The 1951 ruling set a precedent in the principles of international law on the role played by the historical use of a territory.
EUROPEAN NORTH SEA (1969):
Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands have, off their coasts, the European North Sea. These countries, in addition to sovereignty over the waters, have the right to explore and exploit what is known as the "continental shelf" (submarine). In 1967, the three nations turned to The Hague to define the continental shelf area of the Mar del Morte that corresponded to each one. Denmark and the Netherlands proposed a division based on an equidistant line, which benefited them given the geography of the place. While both countries have protruding coastlines “outwards”, Germany has a concave coastline “inwards”, which considerably reduced the German projections. Germany supported its arguments by asking the Court for a "fair and equitable" delimitation. In the ruling, issued in 1969, the court ruled out equidistance and ordered a proportional division, although geometrically irregular, of the seabed.
UNITED KINGDOM AND GERMANY AGAINST ICELAND (1974):
In 1972, Iceland unilaterally published a law that extended its maritime rights on the Atlantic coast from 12 to 50 miles. The purpose was to preserve the marine ecosystem from the increasing fishing predation. The United Kingdom and Germany, which had been fishing in the miles in question for centuries, denounced the Icelandic law before the Court of The Hague. Both countries supported their position with fisheries agreements signed with Iceland in 1961. In these documents, Iceland recognized that its maritime sovereignty reached up to mile 12 off its coast. The court, after weighing the arguments, ruled that although the complainants had a traditional right over the area, the defendant had a preferential right to act for conservation purposes. As a result, the Court ordered that any fishing activity in the area be carried out in a scientifically proven manner. The Hague provision, issued in 1974, is respected to date.
TUNISIA AGAINST LIBYA (1982):
Tunisia and Libya went to the Court in The Hague to define the limits of its sovereignty over the seabed off its coast, in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an area abundant in gas and oil deposits. Tunisia claimed for itself the largest segment of the seabed given its scarcity of natural resources as a country. It was the first time that a nation had used a socioeconomic argument to claim sovereignty over a maritime area. The Court emphatically rejected the Tunisian criterion, arguing that the poverty or wealth of a nation is circumstantial. His ruling, issued in 1982, drew a proportional division of the seabed considering the geographical characteristics of both countries.
CANADA VS UNITED STATES (1984):
In the 1960s Canada and the United States discovered oil in the depths of the Gulf of Maine, north of the Atlantic Ocean. Unilaterally, both countries published rules of sovereignty over the then appetizing gulf. As often happens in these cases, the rules overlapped in the areas with the most oil wealth and especially in the Georges sandbar. The United States even approved extraction programs for some companies in its country. In 1981 Canada took the dispute to The Hague. Three years later, the Court ruling divided the gulf into two zones, handing over most of Georges Bank to the US.
EL SALVADOR AGAINST HONDURAS (1992):
In 1969 El Salvador and Nicaragua staged the so-called Soccer War. The conflict left as balance the dispute over the sovereignty of a border territory of more than 430 kilometers. It was El Salvador who decided to take the case to The Hague and request that this Court be the one to decide the land and maritime boundary with Honduras. Regarding land limits, the Court decided to grant Honduras 62% of the disputed territory, in addition to the sovereignty of El Tigre Island. As for maritime sovereignty, the ruling provided that Honduras, El Salvador and Nicat¿ragua - the other neighbor on the coast that had joined the dispute - have joint sovereignty over the Gulf of Fonseca, which groups these three nations. The historic ruling was issued in 1992.
DENMARK VS NORWAY (1993):
The constant fishing troubles between Denmark and Norway in the Greenland Sea, in the Arctic Circle, ended in 1988, when the Danes applied to the court of The Hague to define its maritime border with Norway. The 55,000 Danes who inhabit that frozen area of the planet and who depend entirely on fishing demanded an end to Norwegian fishermen who came to their shores to hunt whales and seals. Norway, for its part, argued that one of its islands, Jan Mayen, is right in front of the discussion area. To this, Denmark replied that only 25 people live on that island. The Hague ruling, issued in 1993, assigned two-thirds of the disputed sea to Denmark.
QATAR VS BAHRAIN (2001):
The dispute between Qatar and Bahrain took the longest to resolve in The Hague:almost 10 years. The Arab countries, located in the Persian Gulf, resorted to this instance to delimit their maritime and territorial borders in 1991. The area in dispute is an area in which hydrocarbons abound. In territorial matters, the court ruled in its 2011 ruling that the regions known as Zubarah and Fasht ad Dibal sdean were awarded sovereignty to Qatar, while the Hawar and Qit'at Jaradah islands remained in the hands of Bahrain. As for the waters of the gulf, the Court applied the principle of equidistance to divide the area between both nations.
NICARAGUA VS. HONDURAS (2007):
Nicaragua denounced Honduras before the court in The Hague in 1999. The reason for the dispute stemmed from the bilateral treaty signed between Honduras and Colombia in which these two nations affirmed that Nicaraguan maritime sovereignty extended to the 15th parallel. The treaty, signed behind Nicaragua's back, of course, was rejected flatly by the Central American country because the Nicaraguans considered that their maritime sovereignty extended to the 17th parallel. The Honduran government, in the heat of the discussion, presented in its favor fishing and oil exploration permits that Nicaragua granted to operate in the area that he now considered his own. The court, in its ruling, dismissed the value of fishing and exploration permits as border boundary treaties. A sentence that could be used as a precedent. "With this, The Hague made it clear that any fishing or maritime exploration agreement, whatever it may be, cannot be considered a boundary treaty," explains the internationalist Fabián Novak. The Hague resolved the conflict in 2007 with a ruling that establishes an equidistant line in the Caribbean Sea that divides the lands of Nicaragua and Honduras into equal parts.
ROMANIA VS UKRAINE (2009):
In 2004, Romania appealed to the court in The Hague to resolve their maritime dispute with Ukraine, an old conflict that dates back to the times of the Soviet Union and that kept both countries in a permanent dispute over their sovereignty in the Black Sea. At stake was an area rich in gas and oil. The Court, after five years of deliberations, established that the aquatic border between the two countries should be drawn from an equidistant line. This benefited the Romanians, who kept about 80% of the disputed area (12 thousand square meters). Snake Island, a coveted territory in the middle of the Black Sea, was left in the hands of Ukraine.