Hot waters
When Nicaragua took Colombia to court in 2001 over a decades-long
dispute concerning a handful of small islands in the Caribbean, the Colombians
felt they had little to lose. They had exerted sovereignty over the territories
and their waters, which lie about 400 km (250 miles) north of South America and
200 km east of Nicaragua, since the signing of a treaty in 1928. In 1980,
shortly after the Sandinista revolution, Nicaragua claimed the treaty was
invalid, and it later brought the case to the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. But by that point, the two countries’ maritime
border had long been recognised as the 82nd meridian.
However, after studying the case for 11 years, the court issued a ruling
on November 19th that left Colombians stunned. Although it confirmed the
country’s sovereignty over seven tiny islets that form part of the San Andrés
and Providencia archipelago, it granted Nicaragua a maritime economic exclusion
zone extending 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its Caribbean coast, with the
exception of the waters immediately surrounding the islands. That constituted a
transfer of about 30,000 square miles (75,000 square km) of sea previously
controlled by Colombia, with valuable fishing rights and potentially underwater
oil deposits. It transformed two tiny uninhabited Colombian islands,
Quitasueño and Serrana, into isolated enclaves, and left the rest of the
Colombian archipelago jutting into Nicaragua’s newly expanded waters. The
islands’ inhabitants, who are used to fishing in what are now Nicaraguan
waters, say they fear for their livelihoods.The ruling cannot be appealed.
Nicaragua celebrated the ruling by dispatching ships to patrol its new
waters. “By now [the navy has] established sovereignty in that whole
territory,” said Daniel Ortega, the president. But Juan Manuel Santos, his
Colombian counterpart, was in no mood to concede. He refused to withdraw his
country’s navy, and said the ruling was filled with “omissions, mistakes,
excesses [and] inconsistencies that we cannot accept.”
On November 28th he went further, when
Colombia announced its withdrawal from the Pact of Bogotá—an
agreement signed in Colombia’s own capital in 1948—in which the countries of
the Americas agreed to settle any disputes peacefully through the ICJ. Mr
Santos argued that territorial and maritime borders should be established in
the future through treaties, rather than by the court. “Never again should we
have to face what happened to us on November 19th,” he said.
Mr Santos has not said publicly whether
he intends to abide by the ruling. He has sought to distinguish himself
from his predecessor and former political patron, Álvaro Uribe, by emphasising
good relations with Colombia’s neighbours and maintaining a strict adherence to
the letter of the law throughout his administration. Both of those efforts
could be undermined by a prolonged spat with Nicaragua. Tensions with Mr Ortega
could even threaten Mr Santos’s top priority—the ongoing peace talks with the FARC guerrillas—since the Venezuelan government, Mr Ortega’s closest ally, is
facilitating the negotiations and Cuba, another friend of Nicaragua’s, is
hosting them.
However, Mr Uribe has accused Mr Santos of being soft on the country’s enemies, and the
Colombian public was outraged by the ruling. Many Colombians still smart over
the loss of Panama, which was once a Colombian province, in 1903. In an opinion poll
published on November 29th, 85% of respondents said the government should
reject the ruling, even if it means there is a risk of a military confrontation
with Nicaragua. It will require all the political savvy Mr Santos can muster to
keep his countrymen’s belligerent passions at bay.
