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Caribbean & Central America - May 2018 (ISSN 1741-4458)

GUATEMALA/BELIZE: Guatemala votes to ask ICJ to rule on border dispute with Belize

On 15 April Guatemala held a referendum in which voters were asked whether they wanted the International Court of Justice (ICJ), based at The Hague, to settle Guatemala’s claim over half of Belize’s territory. After the ‘yes’ vote won in Guatemala with 95.88% of the vote, Belize announced it will hold its own referendum in a year’s time. If another ‘yes’ vote is secured, the border dispute will be taken to The Hague. While an ICJ resolution will be a lengthy and costly procedure, it could be the only way to ease tensions between the two neighbours, especially in the unmarked border area known as the ‘adjacency zone’, where the incursion of Guatemalan peasants into Belizean territory regularly leads to clashes with the Belizean border patrol.

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