AN APPRAISAL OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIRD PARTY INTERVENTION IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION: CASE OF ICJ RULING ON NIGERIA VERSUS CAMEROON OVER BAKASSI PENINSULA
ABSTRACT
The dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon over the Bakassi Peninsula is a unique case, reflecting both the colonial and the modern thirst for oil. The Bakassi Peninsula is a swampy, 600 square mile area that may contain more than 24B barrels of crude oil. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) was designated as the institution to play an important legal role in resolving border conflicts among UN member states. Legal doctrines are also established as prerequisites in determining the relative merits of claims and their final disposition. In this conflict, the ICJ issued a key ruling on the land and maritime boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria. The court ordered Nigeria to pull its officials, troops, and police from the peninsula, bringing to an end the conflict that had enclosed the two countries for years. Also in the same ruling, the ICJ ordered Cameroon to swiftly withdraw its administration and military police forces from islands of Lake Chad. Both presidents of Cameroon and Nigeria agreed to respect and implement the decision of the ICJ and establish an implementation mechanisms with the help of UN. They also agreed to confidence-building measures including demilitarization of the peninsula and possible economic cooperations with joint ventures from the two countries.
CHAPTER 1 -INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
There is general agreement among historians that ethnic conflicts have been the core cause of bloodshed in Europe and the Mediterranean world. The deep scars that these conflicts leave on people and nations are often obscured by historical accounts that, more often than not, glorify conquest and ignore aggression. Though ethnic conflicts have defined European history for centu-ries, Africa was spared this problem until the Europeans decided to treat the continent as free-for-all real estate. European colonial rule in Africa left behind the same scars as their Bal-kanization schemes had left in Europe. Nations were divided by colonizers, territory was bartered among them, and economic life was shattered. The results of colonial misrule are obvious. Today 103 ethnic conflicts are ongo-ing on the African continent. Some of them are old-fashioned land disputes while others are the product of artificially drawn international borders that divided ethnic groups, and still others have oil in the mix. One such conflict that involves all of the above is the dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon over the Bakassi Peninsula. It is a unique case, reflective of both the colonial heritage and the modern thirst for oil. At the same time, Bakassi emerges as an example of conflict resolution through the rule of law and without resort to arms. My purpose in this essay is to trace the origins of this struggle, delineate conflicting claims over the territory, and reflect on the broader significance of the manner in which it was resolved in contrast with previous approaches to the resolution of ethnic disputes.Prior to World War I, nation-states chose war as their preferred instrument for settling international border conflicts. After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, many countries accepted international mechanisms to address such conflicts, and several conflicts were settled through international negotia-tion. Among the wars were the Albania-Greece conflict (Northern Epirus); the Albania-Yugoslavia-Serbia conflict of 1913, involving border adjustments; the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict (Karabakh); and the Poland-Czechoslovakia disputes (Teschen, Spisz, and Orawa). The latter also involved territorial and population adjustments. This approach gained momentum and accelerated after World War II and would eventually be expanded to the regulation of international trade. Thus, by 1995 member states of the World Trade Orga-nization (WTO) submitted an annual average of thirty cases for resolution using the WTO’s international dispute mechanism.1 In 1946, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was designated as the institution to play an important legal role in the resolution of border con-flicts among UN member states, and legal doctrines were established as pre-requisites in determining the relative merits of claims and their final dis-position. Since its establishment, the ICJ has become the principal judicial organ of the UN entrusted with the resolution of legal disputes between sov-ereign states. The court consists of fifteen judges elected by the UN General Assembly and confirmed by the Security Council. Under Article 36 (2) (the Optional Clause) of the ICJ Statute, the court has jurisdiction in settling dis-putes between UN member states.The “Optional Clause” provides that state parties to the statute (i.e., UN member states as well as Nauru and Switzerland) may at any time declare that they recognize as compulsory, without special agreement, in relation to any other state accepting the same obligation, the court’s jurisdiction in all legal disputes concerning the interpretation of a treaty, any question of international law, the existence of any fact that, if established, would con-1. Todd L. Allee and Paul K. Ruth, “Legitimizing Dispute Settlement: International Legal Ruling as Domestic Cover,” American Political Science Review 100, no. 2 (2006): 221.
Ndumbe: The International Court of Justice and Border-Conflict Resolution 41stitute a breach of an international obligation or the nature or extent of the reparation to be made for the breach of an international obligation.2 Among some of the early disputes that the court addressed were those of the Minuiers and Ecrehos islands between the United Kingdom and France (1950), the border enclaves dispute between the Netherlands and Belgium (1957), the eastern section of the border between Nicaragua and Honduras (1957), the Beagle Channel Islands between Argentina and Chile (1970), the territory along the Beli River between Mali and Burkina Faso (1983), the Gulf of Fonseca between El Salvador and Honduras (1986), the Aozou Strip between Chad and Libya (1990), and the islands in the Chobe River between Botswana and Namibia (1995). In 2002, the ICJ addressed the Bakassi Pen-insula between Cameroon and Nigeria.The Bakassi Peninsula conflict is one of Africa’s throwbacks to the colonial demarcation of the continent. In drawing up artificial boundaries between their possessions in Africa, the colonial masters were imprecise, used only the vaguest documentation, and routinely ignored the ethnic composition of territories. This state of affairs inevitably became the source of many bor-ders that would see years of conflict and periodic outbreak of wars, as was the case with the Bakassi Peninsula issue. The ICJ’s reasoning in its ruling concerning this dispute, its significance, and the role of the UN in the final negotiated settlement offer significant lessons in conflict resolution and con-stitute a focal point of this essay.The History of the Bakassi Peninsula and the DisputeThe Bakassi conflict is a classic example of the thorny and arbitrary colonial borders that split ethnic communities among countries all over the African continent. The Bakassi Peninsula, claimed by both Cameroon and Nigeria, is a swampy, six-hundred-square-mile (one-thousand-square-kilometer) area that juts into the Gulf of Guinea — a region that may contain more than 24 billion barrels of crude oil (about 10 percent of the world’s known oil and gas 2. Peter H. F. Bekker, “International Court of Justice: Its Jurisdiction in Case Brought by Cameroon against Nigeria,” American Society of International Law, June 1998, www.asil.org/insight.9.htm.
42 Mediterranean Quarterly: Summer 2007reserves).3 The peninsula alone is estimated to contain more than 10 billion barrels of crude oil. The territory is also rich in fish.4 Yet the people of the peninsula lack the basic needs of life: potable water, electricity, roads, and education. For more than two decades the peninsula was a major cause of disagreement between Cameroon and Nigeria.The Bakassi Peninsula was settled around 1450 by the Efik and was incorporated within the political framework of the Kingdom of Old Cala-bar. On 10 September 1884, Britain signed a treaty of protection with the kings and chiefs of Old Calabar. As was their practice, the British used this treaty as justification to exercise control over the entire territory of Old Cala-bar, including the Bakassi Peninsula. This protectorate agreement with an African kingdom had no precise definitions of area or of boundaries. On 15 November 1893, Britain and Germany agreed to define their boundaries in Africa, with no input from the African population. This was followed by a subsequent agreement of 19 March 1906 that covered all British and Ger-man territories stretching from Yola to Lake Chad.5 Further detailed agreements were subsequently reached between Brit-ain and Germany on the question of their borders from Yola to the sea. The first such agreement involved a settlement of the frontier between Nigeria and the Cameroons, signed in London on 11 March 1913. The second agree-ment addressed the precise demarcation of the English-German boundary between Niger and Kameroun (as the Germans called it) from Yola to the Cross River and was signed at Obokum on 12 April 1913. The Germans were interested in shrimp fishing and extracted as an assurance from Britain that it would not expand eastward. For Britain, an uninterrupted and secure sea-lane access to the key trading post of Calabar was the primary interest. The Germans conceded the “navigable portion” offshore to Britain, because they already had the option of using Douala as a seaport. In exchange for German cooperation not to threaten British access to Calabar, Britain conceded in the Oboko agreement the Bakassi Peninsula to the Germans. This was achieved without resistance of the obong (ruler), a position that was interpreted by the 3. “Nigeria Agrees Bakassi Handover,” BBC News, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5073256.stm. 4. Paul Maidment, “The Other Gulf,” Forbes.com, www.forbes.com/2003/03/07/cx_pm_0307 westafrica_html.5. Nowa Omoigui, “The Bakassi Story,” www.omoigui.com, 3.
Ndumbe: The International Court of Justice and Border-Conflict Resolution 43colonial power as tacit approval of the agreement. British and German maps from 1914 show the Bakassi Peninsula located in “Kameroun.”6At the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles divided all German territories in Africa between Britain and France, and the League of Nations placed them under their respective mandates. The boundary between British Cameroon and French Cameroon was defined by the French-British Decla-ration of 10 July 1919 signed by Viscount Milner, the British secretary of state for the colonies, and Henry Simon, the French minister for the colonies. Under the terms of this agreement, Bakassi and the rest of British Cameroon was placed under British mandate and administered coterminous with Nige-ria, but the two never merged into a single entity. In fact, the 1913 border was retained. Historically, the territorial authority of the kings and chiefs of Old Calabar is said to have extended as far as the Rio del Rey, which includes Bakassi. Accordingly, Nigeria’s claim to Bakassi was on the basis of the original title vested in the kings and chiefs of Old Calabar, the geographical extent of which covered southeastern Nigeria, which in the 1700s was populated mainly by the Efik and the Efiat. Nevertheless, the plot thickened when Great Britain ceded Bakassi to Germany in 1913, an act that produced a number of contradictions. In bilateral treaties and other legal instruments, Britain ceded the territory to Germany, which governed Kameroun, until Germany was defeated in World War I. Britain and France retained protectorate rights until 1960, when the Republic of Cameroon won its independence. In an 11 February 1961 referendum, Southern Cameroon agreed to join the Republic of Cameroon, and a new question arose for Nigeria concerning delin-eation of the maritime boundary with the newly independent Federal Republic of Cameroon. Soon, oil entered the picture. Cameroon knew of three oil prospect blocks — blocks L, M, and N — in 1959. Block N, the most easterly one, con-stituted the maritime projection of the Bakassi Peninsula, which Nigeria had conceded to be Cameroonian territory. The Nigerian foreign ministry in 1962 wrote, “The boundary follows the lower course of the Akwayafe River, where there appear to be no uncertainty, and then out into Cross River estuary.”7 To 6. Ibid., 47. Written submission by Cameroon to the International Court of Justice, CR 2002/5, 22 February 2002, 13.
44 Mediterranean Quarterly: Summer 2007the surprise of many, despite evidence of an official diplomatic instrument affirming Cameroon’s sovereignty over Bakassi, Nigeria back pedaled in the mid-1960s and the dispute between the two neighbors ensued. In an attempt to mitigate a full-blown war between the two countries, presidents Ahmadou Ahidjo of Cameroon and Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria signed the Yaoundé II Declaration on 4 April 1974, which recognized the validity of the 1913 treaty with respect to Bakassi. The Yaoundé II Declaration also confirmed the bor-derlines established by the same treaty as the recognized borders between Cameroon and Nigeria.8 But these types of disputes have a way of revival, especially when the rich resource of oil is involved.Since 1971 there had been a stalemate between Cameroon and Nigeria over the delineating of maritime boundaries. The Kano Agreement of 1 Sep-tember 1974 was an attempt to resolve the issue of maritime boundaries. It recognized the lawfulness of oil operations carried out in the west of the corridor by Nigeria and to the east by Cameroon. Bakassi and its surround-ing waters were to the east of the corridor.9 By implication Nigeria had thus acknowledged Cameroon’s claim over Bakassi.This point is further amplified and affirmed by other actions of the two countries. Nigeria and Cameroon signed a maritime border agreement in 1975 at Maroua, Cameroon. Both Gowon and Ahidjo on behalf of their respective countries agreed to extend the maritime boundary beyond the limit of the maritime boundary adopted by both countries in the Yaoundé II Declara-tion.10 However, in late 1975 a military coup overthrew General Gowon with-out the agreement having been ratified by the Nigerian parliament. Seizing on that technicality, Nigeria then claimed that because the agreement was never ratified it was not bound by its terms. This position exacerbated an already dangerous situation on the peninsula. Attempts by Britain, France, and Togo to mediate the conflict failed to arrive at a peaceful resolution.11 8. Ibid., 14 – 5.9. Ibid., 16.10. Dola J. Young, “Energy Development and Maritime Boundary Disputes: Two West African Examples,” Texas International Law Journal 19, no. 2 (1984): 441.11. Jedrzej George Frynas, “Foreign Investment and International Boundary Disputes in Africa: Evidence from the Oil Industry,” Occasional Paper Series, no. 9, Africa Studies Centre, School of International Studies and Law, Coventry University (2000): 6.
Ndumbe: The International Court of Justice and Border-Conflict Resolution 45Dilemma: Fight or TalkViolence began on the peninsula on 16 May 1981 when Cameroon gendarmes killed six Nigerian soldiers following a Nigerian military incursion. In 1993, after several skirmishes, the dispute escalated from vituperative salvos and angry recriminations to a massive military build-up on the peninsula by both Cameroon and Nigeria and only a spark was needed to set it all alight. With tensions high, Cameroon, eager
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