ICJ, Judgment of 20 February 1969
FACTS
The Court has been asked to declare the principles and rules of international law applicable to the delimitation as between the parties of the areas of the North Sea continental shelf appertaining to each of them beyond the partial boundaries in the immediate vicinity of the coast already determined between the Federal Republic and the Netherlands by an agreement of 9 June 1965. The Federal Republic and Denmark and the Netherlands, respectively, had, however, been unable to agree on the prolongation of the partial boundaries, mainly because Denmark and the Netherlands had wished the prolongation to be effected on the basis of the equidistance principle, whereas the Federal Republic had considered that it would unduly curtail what the Federal Republic believed should be its proper share of continental shelf area, on the basis of proportionality to the length of its North Sea coastline.
ISSUES
1. Whether the application of the Apportionment Theory is applicable
2. Whether Article 6 of the 1958 Continental Shelf Convention is applicable as contended by Denmark and the Netherlands
3. Whether the Equidistance Principle is a Rule of Customary International Law
RULING
1. No. The task of the Court was to delimit, not to apportion the areas concerned. The rights of the Coastal State in respect of the area of continental shelf constituting a natural prolongation of its land territory under the sea, as contended by the Federal Republic, is an inherent right. In order to exercise it, no special legal acts had to be performed.
2. No. Under the its formal provisions, the Convention was in force for any individual State that had signed it within the time limit provided, only if that state had also subsequently ratified it. Denmark and Netherlands had both signed and ratified the Convention and were parties to it, but the Federal Republic, although one of the signatories, had never ratified it, and was consequently not a party. Had the Federal Republic ratified the Geneva Convention, it could have entered a reservation to Article 6.
3. No. The Court considered that the principle of equidistance, as it figured in Article 6 of the Geneva Convention, had not been proposed by the International Law Commission as an emerging rule of customary law. In order for a rule to become a rule of customary law, it was necessary that Article 6 of the Convention should, at all events potentially, be of a norm-creating character. Article 6 was so framed, however, as to put obligation to effect delimitation by agreement. While a very widespread and representative participation in a convention might show that a conventional rule had become a general rule of international, in the present case the number of ratifications and accessions so far was hardly inadequate.
Comments
Post a Comment