Caribbean & Central America - June 2022

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has said that Colombia doesn’t want to accept an international ruling on maritime activity in disputed waters in order to “keep trafficking the drugs they take to Europe and the US”.

Ortega made the comments on 5 May following the 21 April ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, which ruled that Colombia must “immediately cease” its efforts to control maritime activity in disputed waters off the Colombian archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia. The ICJ ruled that the waters are part of Nicaragua’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), although its decision does not change the map of either country’s territory.

Speaking at an official event in Managua, Ortega said that Colombia is “the world’s biggest producer of drugs,” and “that’s the best business that the Colombian government has.” Colombia is a “narco-state”, said Ortega, and hailed what he said were successful anti-trafficking efforts by Nicaraguan security forces. Colombian President Iván Duque responded to Ortega on 5 May, vowing to continue to defend his country’s sovereignty and calling his Nicaraguan counterpart a dictator.

Some analysts such as Wilder Alejandro Sánchez of US-based consultancy Second Floor Strategies, consider the verdict represents a “defeat for Colombia”, as he outlined to US state-owned radio broadcaster Voice of America on 22 April, because it says the country violated Nicaragua’s sovereignty. “This will affect Colombia’s international image negatively as Nicaragua can obviously now say that even an international court agrees that Colombia has violated Nicaraguan maritime sovereignty,” he said.

The latest ICJ verdict follows a previous ruling in November 2012 which saw Colombia maintain sovereignty over the archipelago, but lose some 75,000km² of sea to Nicaragua [SSR-12-11]. Colombia rejected that ruling, however and the latest ICJ case relates to Colombia’s violation of those new territorial boundaries. Since 2012 both countries have filed complaints about the other alleging rule breaking in the area. Despite the latest ruling it appears that the dispute will rumble on, as fishermen based in the archipelago will not want to stop fishing in areas that they have traditionally been able to use.