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Dispute Over the Status and Use of the Waters of the Silala (Chile v. Bol.) (I.C.J.)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2023

Komlan Sangbana
Komlan Sangbana*
Affiliation:
Dr. Komlan Sangbana is Legal Officer in the Water Convention Secretariat hosted by the UN Economic Commission for Europe, Geneva, Switzerland. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the United Nations.
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Extract

On December 1, 2022, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rendered its judgment in the Dispute Concerning the Status and Use of the Waters of the Silala (Chile v. Bolivia). There is no basin agreement governing the Silala, and Chile and Bolivia have ratified neither the 1997 Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses nor the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes. In the absence of a treaty regime applicable to the waters of the Silala River, the Court had the opportunity in this case to consider the legal framework applicable to international watercourses under customary international law.

Type
International Legal Documents
Information
International Legal Materials , Volume 62 , Issue 5 , October 2023 , pp. 789 - 840
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Judgment (Dec. 1, 2022), https://www.icj-cij.org/case/162/judgments [hereinafter Judgment].

2 2018 I.C.J. Rep. 507 (Oct. 1), https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/153/153-20181001-JUD-01-00-EN.pdf.

3 Judgment, ¶ 63.

4 Id. ¶ 96.

5 Territorial Jurisdiction of the International Oder Commission, Judgment No. 16, 1929, P.C.I.J., Series A, No. 23, p. 27).

6 Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Project (Hungary/Slovakia), Judgment, I.C.J. Rep. 1997, p. 7; Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina v. Uruguay), Provisional Measures, Order of 13 July 2006, I.C.J. Reports 2006, p. 113.

7 Judgment, ¶ 97.

8 Id. ¶ 97, quoting Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina v. Uruguay), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2010 (I), p. 74, ¶ 177.

9 Judgment, ¶ 95.

10 Id. ¶ 98.

11 Id. ¶ 97.

12 Id. ¶ 99.

13 Id. ¶ 83.

14 Pulp Mills, supra note 6, ¶ 77.

15 Judgment, ¶ 101.

16 Id. ¶¶ 111–129; 114.

17 Id. ¶ 118.

18 Id. ¶ 129.

19 See Declaration of Judge Charlesworth, Dispute over the Status and Use of the Waters of the Silala (Chile v. Bolivia), p.1; see also the separate opinion of Judge ad hoc Simma. Both are available at https://www.icj-cij.org/case/162/judgments.

20 F. Sindico, L. Movilla Pateiro, G. Eckstein, Preliminary Reflections on the ICJ Decision in the Dispute Between Chile and Bolivia over Status and Use of the Waters of the Silala, EJIL Blog, could be found: https://www.ejiltalk.org/preliminary-reflections-on-the-icj-decision-in-the-dispute-between-chile-and-bolivia-over-the-status-and-use-of-the-waters-of-the-silala.

21 Charlesworth, supra note 19.

22 Simma, supra note 19.

23 Juliette McIntyre, The Declaratory Judgment in Recent Jurisprudence of the ICJ: Conflicting Approaches to State Responsibility, 29 Leiden J. Int'l L. 177 (2016), 179.

24 Laurence Boisson de Chazournes and Mara Tignino, The Platform for International Water Law and the Dispute over the Status and Use of the Waters of Silala, University of Geneva Platform for International Water Law (Dec. 13, 2022), https://www.unige.ch/droit/eau/en/une/2023/silala.

25 See UNECE & UNESCO, Progress on Transboundary Water Cooperation. Global Status of S.D.G Indicator 6.5.2 and acceleration needs, UN-Water, 2021, https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/progress-transboundary-water-cooperation-global-status-sdg-indicator-652-and-acceleration-needs-2021.