Maritime fight: Côte d’Ivoire’s claims untenable – Ghana

Ghana’s Attorney General, Gloria Akuffo, on Tuesday, 14 February ended her oral submission in the maritime boundary dispute with neighbouring La Cote d’Ivoire.

She told the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), Hamburg, Germany, to reject claims by La Cote d’Ivoire in the dispute between the two West African countries.

The two countries resorted to ITLOS to settle the dispute following the failure on both sides to reach an amicable agreement.

Ms Akuffo told ITLOS that the Francophone country was trying to extend its eastern boundary to benefit from Ghana’s oil reserves, saying: “They simply cannot escape from years of mutual practice, however hard they try, in implementation of – and reinforced by their own official maps – laws and decrees.”

She added: “It was easy to lose count of the different ways in which they tried to portray the coast. Arrows went one way and then the other, coastal directions twisting and turning; land was added; land was removed, depending on what point they wanted to make at any particular moment.”

She told the Special Chamber: “There is, despite Côte d’Ivoire’s protestations to the contrary, an existing boundary, and it is based on equidistance. If, contrary to our view, there is no boundary, then the law dictates that you should not resort to another method of delimitation unless it is unfeasible to construct an equidistant line, and since both parties have easily done so, that surely puts an end to this notion of bisector, an argument which should never have been made, and which appears concocted, unfortunately, only to increase the so-called area in dispute.”

“In this context, we ask you to examine carefully how both parties’ concessions followed the customary boundary; to look at the many Ivorian government maps, which clearly mark that boundary; to weigh up the vast range of evidence which shows where the line was long agreed to lie.”

Ghana is, therefore, urging the Chamber to summarily “reject Côte d’Ivoire’s attempts to argue that an oil field built up and developed over decades should have been abandoned overnight in 2009 when Côte d’Ivoire decided that a different boundary would suit it better”.

The Attorney General further urged the Special Chamber to adjudge and declare, among others, that Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire have 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 also prayed the Chamber to reject “Côte d’Ivoire’s claim alleging violation of article 83 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and Côte d’Ivoire’s sovereign rights”, reiterating the country’s confidence in the Chamber to deliver a principled ruling.

Ms Akuffo was accompanied by former Attorney General Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong.