Maritime dispute: I was confident Ghana would win - Marietta Brew Oppong

Former Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Marrietta Brew Appiah-Oppong has revealed that Ghana’s historic victory in the maritime boundary dispute case against Côte d'Ivoire was highly anticipated; in fact, she was rather confident of the country’s win in the case.

“When I was Attorney General and Minister of Justice…the dispute between Ghana and La Cote d’Ivoire the skeptics were many but I refused to listen and I told many we are going to win this case. This is for Ghana.”

The former Minister of Justice under the erstwhile Mahama government stated that when people were pessimistic about the chances of the country emerging victors, she kept her belief and was hopeful of possible breakthrough.

“I remember the day before the decision, I met some friends in academia colleague lawyers but they were saying but Marietta even if you win this case you can’t get everything. I said I don’t believe we won’t get everything, we will get everything… we are not going to lose one single slice of territory but people thought that we wouldn’t get everything… during the cause of preparation for the case, as we were discussing the process to be adopted before the tribunal, one suggestion came up, maybe we should try and give a scenario of an area that we might be prepared to concede just in case the tribunal would not give us anything. We said hell no, we are not going to concede anything, we are going all out. And come the 23rd of September, we got everything plus more and with the expert that we worked with, it’s a rare thing in international maritime law for countries to get everything they asked for and more.”

Speaking at the 'Resolutions Youth Summit 2019', the former Attorney General recounted and expressed gratitude about how supportive her team was in pursuing the case to ensure positive results were yielded.

“I believe the faith of the team that worked on this case believed that we were going to win everything.”

Background

The Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on Saturday, September 23, 2017 ruled in favour of Ghana after a three-year maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and her western neighbours, La Cote d’Ivoire.

In its judgement the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) gave new coordinates for the remapping of the maritime boundary.

The ruling

The Chamber in a unanimous decision of ruled that there has not been any violation on the part of Ghana on Côte d'Ivoire's maritime boundary.

The Chamber rejected Côte d'Ivoire's argument that Ghana's coastal lines were unstable.

Justice Boualem Bouguetaia from Algeria, President of the Special Chamber in reading the judgement accepted Ghana's argument of adoption of the equidistant method of delineation of the maritime boundary.