Today, the International Court of Justice rendered its judgment in the case concerning Maritime Delimitation between Nicaragua and Honduras in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Honduras). Judgment here; press release here. Nicaragua filed its application on December 8, 1999, and the dispute, as the case name indicates, pertained to the delimitation of the maritime boundary between the two countries in the Caribbean Sea. The competing claims are shown in the map above; the Court's line is shown in the map below. Here's the judgment's dispositif:- finds unanimously that Honduras has sovereignty over Bobel Cay, Savanna Cay, Port Royal Cay and South Cay;
- decides by fifteen votes to two that the starting-point of the single maritime boundary that divides the territorial sea, continental shelf and exclusive economic zones of the Republic of Nicaragua and the Republic of Honduras shall be located at a point with the co-ordinates 15° 00' 52" N and 83° 05' 58" W;
- decides by fourteen votes to three that, from this starting-point, the delimitation line continues along the bisector until it reaches the outer limit of the 12-nautical-mile territorial sea of Bobel Cay. It then traces this territorial sea round to the south until it reaches the median line in the overlapping territorial seas of Bobel Cay, Port Royal Cay and South Cay (Honduras) and Edinburgh Cay (Nicaragua). The delimitation line continues along this median line until it reaches the territorial sea of South Cay, which for the most part does not overlap with the territorial sea of Edinburgh Cay. The line then traces the arc of the outer limit of the 12-nautical-mile territorial sea of South Cay round to the north until it again connects with the bisector, whereafter the line continues along that azimuth until it reaches the area where the rights of certain third States may be affected;
- finds by sixteen votes to one that the Parties must negotiate in good faith with a view to agreeing on the course of the delimitation line of that portion of the territorial sea located between the endpoint of the land boundary as established by the 1906 Arbitral Award and the starting-point of the single maritime boundary as determined by the Court.
Overall, this is a victory for Honduras, or, as the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo puts it, "Honduras triunfa en La Haya, regocijo en todo el país."
