Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana Maritime Boundary Negotiations and Dispute Settlement: Lessons Learned from Diplomatic and Judicial Perspectives—Reflections

Maritime Boundary Delimitation is a very complex and a politically sensitive issue, as it is related to the State’s territorial sovereignty protection and the exercise of its sovereign rights at sea. Conflicts between Coastal States could not be justified only by a mere boundary drawing, because and in reality, behind the boundary issue, are hiding claims on offshore resources development. International law and particularly the Convention on the Law of the Sea has established the legal framework under which this type of conflicts is resolved. In fact, the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea provided rules, norms, and principles that could help States negotiating to resolve peacefully their maritime boundary dispute. Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, two neighboring African coastal States in the Gulf of Guinea have been facing a border dispute for a long period of time and failed to resolve their case through diplomatic channels and were obliged to recourse to a Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate why Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana were unsuccessful to come up with a negotiated bilateral treaty on their maritime boundary, and the lessons one can draw from the Tribunal’s ruling with respect to its interpretation of the concept of negotiation in this matter.