Ghana has not moved into Cote d’Ivoire’s maritime boundary - Gloria Akuffo
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Ms Gloria Afua Akuffo, has officially ended Ghana’s oral arguments at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) with a call on the ITLOS to reject Cote d’Ivoire’s claims that Ghana has moved into its maritime boundary.
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“And finally, we ask you to reject Cote d’Ivoire’s attempts to argue that an oil field built up and developed over decades should have been abandoned overnight in 2009 when Cote d’Ivoire decided that a different boundary would suit it better.
“The cynicism here is all that of Cote d’Ivoire, I am afraid to say, not of Ghana,” the Attorney-General noted.
She prayed the Special Chamber to apply well-established legal principles to a clear and consistent body of evidence.
“We submit that the law and the evidence point inexorably to the maritime boundary observed by both parties for half a century – the line, which we have termed the customary equidistance boundary. We say: You must uphold that line either as a result of the parties’ tacit agreement or by way of an adjustment to the provisional equidistance line to achieve an equitable solution,” Ms Akuffo prayed.
She said the duty of the Special Chamber was to bring finality to the dispute with what she termed as a “most valued neighbour and establish certainty of legal rights and entitlements of the parties’ fortune in the conduct of their affairs in the future.”
According to her, it would “be most unfortunate, should a contrary outcome, characterised by renewed and disruptive disputation between our two states and extending to third parties, be triggered by the decision of this Special Chamber.”
Principled approach
Ms Akuffo stated that the most regrettable part of the case was Cote d’Ivoire’s attempts to portray Ghana as reckless and cynical in its development of the oilfields in the border region.
Nonetheless, Ms Akuffo reiterated Ghana’s confidence in the Special Chamber as being principled in its approach and commitment to stability, certainty and equity.
She said Ghana had presented its case with a wealth of clear and compelling evidence, adding; “As a law-abiding state, Ghana has developed oil operations only on territory which belongs to it and which Cote d’Ivoire long recognised and accepted as belonging to Ghana.”
“We are not asking you to create new rights for Ghana out of those operations. Rather, we are asking you to look at how those operations came about, and what their existence tells you about the parties’ shared intentions as to the locations of the boundary,” the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice stressed.
Ghana’s requests
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice is praying the Special Chamber to declare that Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire mutually recognised, agreed and applied an equidistance-based maritime boundary in the territorial sea, Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and continental shelf within 200 Miles.
She is also praying the chamber to hold that the maritime boundary in the continental shelf beyond 200 Miles follows an extended equidistance boundary along the same azimuth (azimuth is a horizontal angle measured clockwise from any fixed reference plane or easily established base direction) as the boundary within 200 Miles to be the limit of the national jurisdiction.
Further to that, Ms Akuffo wants the Special Chamber to hold that Cote d’Ivoire was in accordance with international law, estopped from objecting to the agreed maritime boundary.
Another order being sought by Ghana is a declaration that, “The land boundary terminus and starting point for the agreed maritime boundary is at Boundary Pillar 55 (BP 55).”
She said the chamber should also hold that, “The customary boundary between Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire in the Atlantic Ocean starts at BP 55, connects to the customary equidistance boundary mutually agreed by the parties at the outer limit of the territorial sea, and then follows the agreed boundary to a distance of 200 M. Beyond 200 M, the boundary continues along the same azimuth to the limit of national jurisdiction.”
Ghana is also asking the Special Chamber to reject Cote d’Ivoire’s claim that Ghana violated the Special Chamber’s April 25, 2015 order, as well as claims that Ghana violated Article 83 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and Cote d’Ivoire’s rights.
Assistance to tribunal
Ms Akuffo told the Special Chamber that it was only Ghana that had provided the needed assistance to enable it to resolve the issue, stressing that Cote d’Ivoire had avoided confronting the “many problems inherent in the arguments it advances in opposition to Ghana’s clear, consistent and straightforward case.
“Instead of engaging with the maps and charts, the laws and decrees, including those of Ivorian provenance – it conspicuously avoids them. They are brushed off as the products of private parties, even though they are produced by the Ivorian state itself.
“The presidential decrees and national laws recognising an international border with Ghana are swept away as “mere legislation,” Ms Akuffo stressed.
The Attorney-General criticised Cote d’Ivoire of recasting “half a century of mutual practice respecting an agreed equidistance boundary as nothing more than Ghana’s unilateral attempt to impose a fait accompli on its neighbour,” Ms Akuffo noted.
She also accused Cote d’Ivoire of failing to provide answers to its own maps, which unquestionably depict the location of the customary equidistance boundary with Ghana’s clearly marked.
She accordingly prayed the tribunal not to be swayed by Cote d’Ivoire’s “scattershot” approach but be guided by geography, science and the law.
Ms Akuffo said Cote d’Ivoire’s prayer to the tribunal to shift the boundary in order to benefit from hydrocarbon resources was wrong in law because “one does not draw international boundaries so as to share out natural resources.”
Mr Daniel Alexander
One of Ghana’s lawyers, Mr Daniel Alexander, denied claims by Cote d’Ivoire that Ghana was not co-operating.
He said a vast area of land offshore had not been touched by Ghana because of the provisional measures, and expressed regret that Cote d’Ivoire had not shown why it alone should be exempted from paying compensation to Ghana should it (Cote d’Ivoire) lose the case.
Turning to Cote d’Ivoire’s claim over portions of Ghana’s oil, Mr Alexander said; ‘The Tullow agreement was entered into in March 2006. That was three years before Cote d’Ivoire raised issues with Ghana and some nine years before it first put forward its provisional equidistance line.”
Cote d’Ivoire
Cote d’Ivoire will advance its final oral argument tomorrow, Thursday, February 16, 2017.
The President of the Special Chamber constituted to deal with the dispute, Judge Boualem Bouguetaia, is presiding over the hearing.
