Peru v. Chile : The International Court of Justice decides on the status of the maritime boundary

Abstract

The ICJ’s decision addresses facts and themes related to the question whether or not a maritime boundary extended to 200-nautical miles had been set between Chile and Peru. Thus, the ICJ decision is deeply interwoven with the history of the maritime zone of 200–nautical miles and its Latin American roots.The task of theCourtwas to ascertain whether a delimited boundary had been agreed, and if that had been the case, whether it has been established in connection with the long standing proclamations of an extended maritime zone of 200 nautical miles, first unilaterally and then multilaterally by the 1952 Santiago Declaration on the Maritime Zone and further agreements. The explicit reference to a delimitation line embedded in successive agreements was settled in favor of an implicit agreement enshrined in the terms of the 1954 Agreement of a Maritime Frontier Zone, preceded by a subtle crystallization of a delimitation process prior to it. The point was deduced from Article I of the 1954 Agreement which explicitly states that “A special zone is hereby established, at a distance of 12 nautical miles from the coast, extending to a breadth of 10 nautical miles on either side of the parallel which constitutes the maritime boundary between the two countries”.