Caribbean & Central America - October 2013 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government of President Daniel Ortega has lost patience with its Colombian counterpart which is refusing to apply the November 2012 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which awarded Nicaragua disputed Caribbean Sea territory previously held by Colombia [RC-12-12]. Last month it presented the ICJ with a new case against Colombia to determine the “precise course of the boundary of the continental shelf” beyond the 200-nautical-mile limit defined in the 2012 ruling. Just over a week later Costa Rica, which in November 2010 filed a suit against Nicaragua before the ICJ over the San Juan River area, announced a new complaint against Nicaragua for ignoring another ICJ decision.

President Ortega’s 16 September decision to present a new case against Colombia was in response to the previous week’s announcement by Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos that his government would not apply the ICJ ruling considering it to violate Colombia’s constitution. Santos, who also announced that he would file a demand of constitutionality against the 1948 Pact of Bogotá, which recognised the ICJ’s jurisdiction, argues that Colombia’s borders are defined by its constitution, which stipulates that these can only be changed by congress. The 2012 ICJ ruling awarded Nicaragua 75,000km² of disputed territory (although the Ortega government maintains it is more like 90,000km²). The area in question, an important fishing ground, is also believed to contain oil. Nicaragua’s latest case is in line with a petition submitted back in June to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), requesting the expansion of Nicaragua’s continental platform in the Caribbean Sea from the designated 200 nautical miles off its coast to 350 nautical miles.

While legal experts in both Nicaragua and Colombia question Santos’s argument, suggesting it is in breach of international law, Costa Rica has since called into question the Ortega government’s respect for the ICJ. On 24 September, the government of President Laura Chinchilla presented the ICJ with a request for new provisional measures against Nicaragua in relation to the San Juan River dispute. Previously on 17 September Chinchilla and her foreign minister, Enrique Castillo, presented two satellite photographs that they said showed two canals being constructed in the north of Calero Island – which lies in the disputed area. This would be in breach of a provisional March 2011 ICJ ruling [RC-11-03], which outlawed the presence of all civilians, military and police officials in the disputed area, bar Costa Rican environmental officials. Costa Rican officials told reporters that after “unusual movement and activity” was detected on the island earlier this year, a satellite image was taken on 5 September that appeared to show the construction of the canals, which were not discernible in a previous photo taken on 30 June.

Costa Rica’s new request to the ICJ calls for Nicaragua to “suspend all dredging or any other activity and specifically in the two artificial canals; for Nicaragua to immediately withdraw all personnel, infrastructure…and equipment …from the territory…and to allow Costa Rica to carry out environmental remediation in the territory to prevent irreparable damage to the disputed territory”. With the Nicaraguan government denying the claims regarding the canals, dismissing them as an invention by Chinchilla, the Costa Rican government has announced other measures in response, suggesting relations are further set to deteriorate. These include the deployment of environmental officers to assess the damage caused by the construction of the two canals – a move which has been communicated to both the ICJ and the secretariat of the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (an inter-governmental convention to which both Nicaragua and Costa Rica are signatories).

• Deal with Panama

On 25 September Panama and Nicaragua announced that a preliminary deal had been reached on their maritime boundaries. This followed a meeting between the Panamanian and Nicaraguan foreign ministers, Fernando Núñez Fábrega and Samuel Santos, respectively, which took place on the sidelines of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York City. The meeting was in response to Panama’s decision along with Costa Rica to co-sign a letter presented by Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos to the UN denouncing Nicaragua’s “expansionist” ambitions in the Caribbean Sea. The deal came after Foreign Minister Santos provided assurances that Nicaragua’s latest request to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) to expand its continental platform beyond 200 nautical miles would not affect Panamanian territory.