Caribbean & Central America - April 2006 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The longstanding border dispute between Honduras and El Salvador was finally resolved on 18 April when Honduran president Manuel Zelaya met his Salvadorean counterpart Tony Saca in a ceremony in the small border hamlet of El Poy to ratify the border between the two countries.

The ceremony formally brought to an end a border dispute dating back to the infamous "Soccer War" between the two countries in 1969. The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled on the delimitation of bolsones (disputed areas) along the border in 1992, but despite intervention from the Organization of American States and a further ICJ ruling in 2003, the final 10.5km of the 374.5km border were not defined until this year. 

The ICJ awarded Honduras 300.1 sq km of the (mostly rural and mountainous) disputed territory; El Salvador, 137.7 sq km. Saca said that the border dispute was now consigned to the past while Zelaya said that the next step was to improve integration in Central America as a whole. Border disputes in Central America have traditionally put paid to long-standing efforts to forge a bona fide customs union in the sub-region.