Verdict expected for maritime dispute between Kenya and Somalia

Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble (left), received in Mombasa by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in August 2021. AFP - -

Text by: Léonard Vincent Follow

4 min

The International Court of Justice in The Hague will deliver its verdict this Tuesday, October 12 at 3 p.m., in the maritime dispute between Somalia and Kenya.

This will be the epilogue of a judicial soap opera dating from 2014, when Mogadishu requested arbitration from the main UN judicial body against its neighbor whom it accuses of occupying its territory illegally and of profiting unduly from its natural resources.

Advertising

Read more

Somalia will know this Tuesday if it was right to be so sure of its fact. It asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to officially draw its maritime border with Kenya, to give it a geographical and legal existence, like the land border between the two countries which dates back to 1915. , in the colonial era, when the British occupied Kenya and Italy occupied Somalia. The verdict of the ICJ should do just that, after six months of reflection by its judges.

Tracing a maritime border certainly obeys rules of international law and maritime law, but also of geography - to take into account the peculiarities of the coasts and the seabed - as well as very complex customary or historical antecedents.

All this forms an abundant case-law which most of the time requires the arbitration of a third party: this was the meaning of the Somali initiative, on August 28, 2014, when it lodged it with the International Court of Justice in La Hague what is called a "proceeding" against Kenya on a " 

 ".

► Listen again: Somalia versus Kenya, the stakes of a major maritime conflict

Because until this day, the two neighboring countries have an antagonistic conception of their line of separation at sea. Kenya, by a presidential proclamation of 1979, evolves below a latitudinal line, in what it considers to be its maritime territory, and takes advantage of

 Somalia's

“ 

” on the subject to say that this route was accepted in fact - until Somalia's complaint to the Court in 2014.

But Somalia, on the contrary, says that based on international law - and even Kenyan law - and the court's case law, Kenya has been violating the law and its territorial sovereignty with impunity for years. And that now that Somalia has a recognized, functional government - which was no longer the case for many years from 1991 - it is time to agree on a clear and legal course, with the " official stamp ”of the principal jurisdiction of the United Nations. Last March, his lawyers presented a very strong case on this basis.

Kenya, after having initially accepted the arbitration of the ICJ, has gradually retracted, until declaring last Friday that it would not recognize the verdict rendered on Tuesday. Its foreign ministry issued a scathing statement, saying that in addition to " 

 ”of the Court, affirming finally that“

 ”.

2/4 Kenya on September 24, 2021 joined other members of the UN in withdrawing its recognition of the International Court of Justice compulsory jurisdiction.

As a sovereign nation Kenya shall no longer be subjected to an international court or tribunal without its express consent.

- ForeignAffairsKenya (@ForeignOfficeKE) October 8, 2021

► Read also: Kenya disavows the International Court of Justice

Kenya had also given up on pleading before the judges. In a two-page letter sent to the registry of the Court just before the hearings in March 2021, the Kenyan Minister of Justice explained his retreat by the technical constraints related to the health situation, the delays in the preparation of the hearings given the pandemic, but also the presence on the bench of the judges of the ICJ of a Somali, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, accused of " 

 ". The Somalia experts therefore pleaded alone, in front of the empty chairs reserved for Kenya.

Of course, behind the legal quibbles, there are questions of money.

It turns out that in the disputed maritime territory are

gas blocks

, rather prodigious resources, which Kenya has already put on sale to international oil companies.

However, these resources, Somalia considers that they belong to it by right.

Newsletter

Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• Disputed territories

• Somalia

• Kenya

• International justice