Court Watch
see a boost to GDP as high as 0.5 percent. Job creation is expected to spike, and the average Eu- ropean household could see an annual increase of 545 euros. Those numbers are hard to ignore con- sidering Europe’s slow recovery from the global financial crisis and the well-documented struggles of EU powers, Germany and France. After the ECJ ruling, however, it is unclear when and how the negotiations, ambitiously slated to conclude in De- cember of this year, will be interrupted by the new transparency requirements.
* Submitted by Justin Kohlbeck
Permanent Court of Arbitration Issues Award in Bangladesh-India Maritime Border Dispute
On July 7, 2014, the Arbitral Tribunal within the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague con- cluded a 40-year dispute by issuing an award in the matter of the Bay of Bengal Maritime Bound- ary Arbitration between the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the Republic of India.
The Tribunal determined land boundaries, maritime boundaries, and exclusive economic zones in the areas of the Bay of Bengal where the claims of Bangladesh and India overlapped.
Firstly, the Tribunal considered the historical back- ground of the case and the cause of the dispute. The independence declaration by Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 was a turning point, since it lead to a new territorial configuration which interfered with the 1947 Radcliffe Award that demarked the boundaries between East and West Bengal. The Radcliffe Award was the first Court decision to set the boundaries, more precisely the boundary ter- minus which was further disputed in the current case by the Parties. Hence, this was the first issue brought before the Tribunal, as a maritime delimi- tation starts with the establishment of the bound- ary terminus if the latter is unclear.
Secondly, Bangladesh relied on the relevant cir- cumstances method as justification to widen its
maritime territory, an argument previously dis- missed by the Tribunal until it was questioned with reference to the waters beyond 200 nautical miles (nm).
Bangladesh sought the right to an extended con- tinental shelf of a surface exceeding 200 nm and promoted the use of the angle bisector method as being applicable in the case, against the equidis- tance method. The argument sustained was that the concave coastlines of its territories would draw the lines towards the inner concavity, diminishing drastically the maritime zones to roughly 180 nm and consequently defer the right to an outer con- tinental shelf – an extension of the land mass of Bangladesh.
According to the Nicaragua v. Honduras case, as recalled by Bangladesh, the angle bisector meth- od involves tracing the direction of the delimitation line as the bisector of the angle formed by the Par- ties’ coasts with straight line structure.
In contrast, India supported the equidistance method stating the jurisprudence referred to by its counterpart was outdated and that under modern jurisprudence, and in the absence of any compel- ling reason, a provisional equidistance line must be drawn.
Thirdly, even though Bangladesh’s efforts to per- suade the Tribunal to apply the relevant circum- stances method to alter the delimitation of the areas within 200 nm by the equidistance method were fruitless, the Tribunal admitted its claim re- garding the relevant circumstances method be- yond 200 nm despite minimal evidence from Ban- gladesh to demonstrate a dependence on fishing in the Bay of Bengal. The Tribunal based its ruling on insufficient proof. However, it admitted that the existence of cut-off effect is based on two criteria that could be converted into an adjustment of the provisional equidistance line which prevents the coastal state to extend its maritime boundary un- der international law, and it has not achieved the equitable solution.
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