17 de julio 2023
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The Colombian Foreign Minister, Alvaro Leyva, celebrated the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which rejected Nicaragua's claim to extend its continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from the Caribbean coast. Daniel Ortega's regime assumed the sentence as “unavoidable compliance,” while they received criticism that the ruling resulted from the “weakness of its foreign policy.”
The decision of the highest international court of justice, read on Thursday morning, July 13, 2023, from The Hague by its president, Joan E. Donoghue, marks the end of a long-running dispute between the two countries that began in 2001. During this time, three judgments were handed down, two of which were favorable to Nicaragua and the last one to Colombia.
“The Court concludes that, in accordance with customary international law, the right of a State to a continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of its territorial sea may not extend to maritime areas within 200 nautical miles of the baselines of another State,” the ICJ's ruling reads.
In its previous ruling, on April 21, 2022, The Hague ordered Colombia not to intervene in Nicaraguan waters and rejected Colombia's claim that its nationals have the right to fish in Nicaraguan waters, which became a problem for Gustavo Petro's Administration that remains unresolved more than a year later.
Colombia’s triumphalism with the new ruling also contrasts with that country's rejection of the 2012 ruling when the ICJ awarded the Central American country 75,000 square kilometers in the Caribbean Sea, a decision that was interpreted as a “historic victory” for Nicaragua.
“Each of us will undoubtedly remember this day. The International Court of Justice has just handed down its last sentence in the long list of decisions that make up the judicial file before this court between Colombia and Nicaragua,” Leyva celebrated in a video broadcast after the decision was announced from the Colombian island of San Andres.
The vote at the ICJ was 13 votes in favor to four in disagreement. The ruling coincided with an investigation announced by the Attorney General's Office of that country to the Colombian ambassador in Managua, León Fredy Muñoz, who recently participated in a march in favor of the Ortega regime in commemoration of the Sandinista revolution, contrary to the critical position of Petro's government, which has denounced the human rights violations committed by the Nicaraguan Executive.
For the Colombian Foreign Minister, the new sentence rejected “the pretensions of a supposedly extended continental platform for Nicaragua to the detriment of our territory,” which, if it had been achieved, “would have been a terrible precedent for the whole region.”
This is “a decision that will be transcendental for the maritime spaces, it will echo in other regions where tension was uselessly created, thus avoiding conflicts that could put global security at risk,” insisted the head of Colombian diplomacy.
However, a Nicaraguan international law expert pointed out under the condition of anonymity that “one of the great challenges Colombia faces” is that Thursday's ruling is based on res judicata for the 2012 ruling, which has been ignored by Colombia, so “accepting the validity of this ruling on the continental shelf beyond 200 miles implies, in many ways, accepting the 2012 ruling, which delimits the maritime borders between both countries.”
“In that sense,” he continued, “this latest ruling represents a historic opportunity to change the way in which the dispute has been dealt with, so that a dialogue respectful of international law, which includes the Court's rulings, can be initiated to provide consensual answers to the problems still pending.”
Not everyone in Colombia celebrated with the foreign minister's enthusiasm. Armando Benedetti, former ambassador of that country to Venezuela, immersed in a recent scandal that determined his departure weeks ago from Petro's circle of trust, accepted that there was not much to celebrate.
“There is not much to celebrate with the ICJ ruling. Colombia already lost maritime space in 2012. What little there is to celebrate is thanks to the change in strategy put forward by President @petrogustavo (and no one else), which prevented Nicaragua from extending its continental shelf,” Benedetti stated on his Twitter account.
Carlos Argüello: 2012 sentence is reaffirmed
The Nicaraguan representative to The Hague, Carlos Argüello, considered in official media that Nicaragua has come out well in the ICJ sentences, despite the refusal to extend the maritime platform of his country, which was rejected by the court.
For the Nicaraguan representative, the “important” part of the sentence “is that our right granted by the 2012 sentence, which Colombia disputed from the first moment, has been reaffirmed; so in that sense, we have come out well.”
The Ortega dictatorship, through a statement read by its spokeswoman and vice-president Rosario Murillo, said it will abide by the sentence and recognizes it as “firm, definitive and of obligatory compliance.” While highlighting the reiterated presence of Nicaragua before The Hague, which dates back to 1984, she assured that she hopes that “Colombia recognizes the value and effectiveness of all the judgments of the Court, in particular the 2012 judgment.”
The same expert in international law, quoted above, affirmed that the reasons for the unfavorable judgment against Nicaragua are eminently technical and legal, since at the ICJ “the margin for political considerations is non-existent or extremely reduced.”
“The Court was faced with an unprecedented technical-legal problem, in which one of the keys to an adequate response was to determine the existence or not of rules of customary international law, that is to say, derived from international custom, applicable to the case. It is a judgment of great legal complexity and in this sense it establishes jurisprudence,” he emphasized.
Another Nicaraguan diplomat highlighted, however, the poor performance of Nicaragua's legal team in The Hague. He argued that seeking any other explanation would be an “attempt to cover the sun with a finger” and lamented the absence of figures such as the late specialists Mauricio Herdocia, Ian Brownlie, and Alejandro Montiel, while also mentioning the names of Paul Reichler, Edmundo Castillo, and Ana Margarita Vijil.
“I believe that the goodwill that Nicaragua had gained with the Court, obeying its decisions and those of other jurisdictional spaces at the international level, was lost here. The Court even seems to reverse part of the 2012 decision, giving the islands of San Andres, Providencia, and Santa Catalina 200 miles of the continental shelf, thus blocking our exit to the Caribbean,” he added.
However, the diplomat maintained that the rights of the coastal states to the 200 miles were left untouched because by “giving full weight to the three islands, they would have gone after bisectors until they reached Corn Island.”
The regime's position was also vehemently questioned by former presidential candidates, Felix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastian Chamorro, former political prisoners exiled to the United States last February.
“Daniel Ortega's tyranny has harmed the sovereign interests of Nicaraguans and is perceived as a risk to hemispheric security," Maradiaga said in a message. The former candidate added: “I maintain that the close political relations between Ortega and the terrorist states are having a high cost for the Nicaraguan people.”
Chamorro argued that the failure of the ruling demonstrates the poverty of Ortega's foreign policy and agreed that previous results had been more equitable. “In past rulings (the judges) had balanced positions of both sides. In this case, they gave Nicaragua nothing, which reflects the weakness of the arguments,” he lamented.
The international law expert affirmed, on the other hand, that the responsibility for the successes and failures in the handling of the dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua is shared by different governments.
“It is not a question of triumphs or defeats for one or the other of the parties, but of an advance and a historical opportunity to make the use of the existing wealth in those territories a reality, in favor of the development of both peoples, based on the security provided by the law,” the specialist pointed out.
This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff.
