Somalia respectfully requested the Court to determine the complete course of the maritime boundary between Somalia and Kenya in the Indian Ocean, including in the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical mile, on the basis of international law, Somalia further requested the Court to determine the precise geographical coordinates of the single maritime boundary in the Indian Ocean.
- Somalia bases its claim on The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) , specifically, Articles 15, 74 and 83, governing the delimitation of the territorial sea, continental shelf and EEZ. Also applicable is customary international law, as well as the general international law of maritime delimitation as applied by this Court and other international tribunals,
- For its part, Kenya emphasized considerations of “equity and fairness” which, it maintained, would yield the “parallel of latitude” reflected in its 2005 Presidential Proclamation.
- Kenya has previously sought to justify the parallel line by reference to a vague appeal to “equitable principles”, claiming that an equidistant boundary would be inequitable in light of the maritime boundary that Kenya negotiated with its southern neighbour, Tanzania, in 1976 and 2009.
That argument is entirely without merit, Kenya freely negotiated a parallel boundary with Tanzania and voluntarily undertook to be bound by that maritime border. It cannot now invoke what it perceives as the negative consequences of that agreement in order to seek to diminish Somalia’s sovereign rights and jurisdiction. Kenya alone bears responsibility for the consequences of the agreement it entered into with Tanzania. In regards to Somalia, the Kenya-Tanzania agreements are res inter alios acta and they cannot be invoked against Somalia to “compensate” Kenya for the consequences of the bargain in made hundreds of miles to the south.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g8411f.ct0 ... 57,0.446,0
The areas has been under the jurisdiction of the Government of Somalia since independence in 1 July 1960, It is therefore unclear on what legal basis Kenya claims that the boundary follows the parallel of latitude that transects the LBT
Kenya claims as the boundary in the territorial sea a parallel of latitude. Its claim is wholly unjustifiable, having no basis in international law. It is also fundamentally unfair and unprincipled. Even more remarkably, the boundary line in the territorial sea now claimed by Kenya is contrary to a position expressly enshrined in its own domestic law for over three decades. http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/pdfdow ... Cap371.pdf
The parallel boundary claimed by Kenya in 2005 has no historical or legal basis, The colonial powers did not agree on a maritime boundary following a parallel, and the governments of Somalia and Kenya reached no such agreement following independence,
Somalia articulated its position that the “principle of equidistance” was well-established in international law and jurisprudence. It also emphasized that no country could unilaterally establish a boundary in the absence of an agreement with its neighbouring country, as Kenya had purported to do
From at least 1972 Kenya’s legislation expressly recognised an equidistance boundary in the territorial sea, and the Kenyan legislature expressly reaffirmed the existence of an “equidistant” boundary in 1989. It is therefore unclear on what legal basis Kenya claims that the boundary follows the parallel of latitude that transects the LBT
Somalia by express reference to equidistance. Kenya’s Territorial Waters Act of 1972 described itself as “An Act of Parliament to make provision for the delimitation of the territorial waters of Kenya, and for purposes incidental thereto, The Act provided that the width of Kenya’s territorial sea “shall be measured in the manner set out in the Schedule to this Act calculated in accordance with the provisions of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone
Section 2(4) of the Act stated http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/pdfdow ... Cap371.pdf On the coastline adjacent to neighbouring States the breadth of the territorial sea shall extend to a Median Line every point of which is equidistant from the nearest points on the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial waters of each of the respective States is measured”.Seventeen years later, the Kenyan legislature enacted the Maritime Zones Act of 1989. The 1989 Act reiterated the territorial sea provisions in the 1972 Act in materially identical terms. The 1989 Act states that it was intended, inter alia, to “consolidate the law relating to the territorial waters … of Kenya”.It makes reference to the territorial sea provisions of UNCLOS and expressly adopts an “equidistant” territorial sea boundary. Section 3 provides:
As far as Somalia has been able to determine, Kenya’s Maritime Zones Act of 1989 is still in force. Kenya’s Interpretation and General Provisions Act (Cap 2.) defines the expression “the territorial waters” as “any part of the open sea within twelve nautical miles of the coast of Kenya measured in accordance with the provisions of the Maritime Zones Act”. This definition of Kenya’s territorial sea applies for the purposes of “every other written law, and in all public documents enacted, made or issued before or after the commencement of this Act”.
Kenya’s Maritime Zones Act of 1989
http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/pdfdow ... Cap371.pdf
https://www.un.org/Depts/los/LEGISLATIO ... ritime.pdf
Kenya has no case, stop wasting Somalia time.
