Case Concerning Territorial Dispute (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. Chad)

Case Concerning Territorial Dispute (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v.
Chad)
In 1989, Libya and Chad entered into a "Framework Agreement on the Peaceful Settlement of the
Territorial Dispute between the Great Socialist People's Libyan Jamahiriya and the Republic of Chad" in
order to settle a long-outstanding dispute as to the boundary between the two countries. During the
proceedings Libya claimed that there was no existing boundary and that it was accordingly the Court's
duty to determine it. To the contrary, Chad proceeded on the basis that there was indeed an pre-
existing boundary which simply had to be located by the Court.
Both parties agreed, however, that a 1955 Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighbourliness concluded
between France (as the previous colonial power exercising sovereignty over the territory which later
became Chad) and Libya was binding upon them. One of the matters specifically addressed in this treaty
was the question of frontiers, dealt with in its Article 3 and Annex I.
In its judgment, the Court first examined Article 3 of the 1955 Treaty, together with the Annex to which
that Article refers, in order to decide whether or not that Treaty resulted in a conventional boundary
between the territories of the parties and decide that question in the positive. Said Article 3 of the
Treaty referred to the international instruments which were in force on the date of the constitution of
the United Kingdom of Libya including a Franco-British Convention of 14 June 1898; a declaration
completing the same of 21 March 1899; a Franco-Italian Agreement of 1 November 1902; a Convention
between the French Republic and the Sublime Porte of 12 May 1910; a Franco-British Convention of 8
September 1919 and, finally, a Franco-Italian Arrangement of 12 September 1919.
The Court then recalled that, in accordance with the rules of general international law, a treaty must be
interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to its terms in their
context and in the light of its object and purpose. It stated that interpretation must be based above all
upon the text of the treaty. As a supplementary measure recourse may be made to supplementary
means of interpretation such as the preparatory work of the treaty and the circumstances of its
conclusion.
According to the Court, the use of the word "recognize" in Article 3 of the 1955 Treaty indicated that a
legal obligation was undertaken by the parties, i.e. that they had accepted that frontier, that is, they had
agreed to draw legal consequences from its existence, to respect it and to renounce the right to contest
it in the future.
In the view of the Court, the terms of the Treaty signified that the parties thereby recognized the
complete frontier between their respective territories. According to the Court it would have been
incompatible with a recognition couched in such terms to contend, as Libya had done, that only some of
the specified instruments contributed to the definition of the frontier, or that a particular frontier
remained unsettled, since otherwise Article 3 of the Treaty and Annex I would have been deprived of
their ordinary meaning. The only task of the Court was thus to determine the exact content of the
undertaking previously entered into by the parties.
Since Article 3 of the 1955 Treaty referred to the international instruments "en vigueur", i.e. in force on
the date of the constitution of the United Kingdom of Libya in 1951, Libya contended that the
instruments mentioned in Annex I and relied on by Chad had no longer been in force at the relevant
date. The Court did not accept these contentions. It argued that to draw up a list of governing
instruments while leaving to subsequent scrutiny the question whether or not they were in force would
have been pointless. The judgment takes the view that the parties agreed to consider the instruments
listed as being in force for the purposes of Article 3, since otherwise they would have not referred to
them in the annex. The judgment further points out that the text of Article 3 clearly conveys the
intention of the parties to reach a definitive settlement of the question of their common frontiers.
Article 3 and Annex I were intended to define the frontiers between the parties by reference to legal
instruments which would yield the course of such frontiers. Any other construction would have been
contrary to one of the fundamental principles of interpretation of treaties, consistently upheld by
international jurisprudence, namely that of effectiveness.
This conclusion reached by the Court was further reinforced by an examination of the context of the
Treaty, and in particular, of the Convention of Good Neighbourliness between France and Libya,
concluded between the Parties at the same time as the Treaty, as well as by its travaux préparatoires.
Having concluded that the contracting parties wished, by the 1955 Treaty, and particularly by its Article
3, to define their common frontier, the Court then thoroughly examined the frontier between Libya and
Chad which resulted from the international instruments listed in Annex I.
The Court next considered the subsequent attitudes of the Parties regarding the boundary. It found that
no subsequent agreement, either between France and Libya, or between Chad and Libya, had called into
question the frontier in this region deriving from the 1955 Treaty. On the contrary, if one took into
account treaties entered into subsequent to the entry into force of the 1955 Treaty, there was support
for the proposition that after 1955, the existence of a determined frontier had been accepted and had
been acted upon by the two parties concerned.
The Court then examined the attitudes of the parties, subsequent to the 1955 Treaty, on occasions when
matters pertinent to the frontiers came up before international fora, and noted the consistency of
Chad's conduct in relation to the location of its boundary.
The Court finally stated that, in its view, the 1955 Treaty, notwithstanding the provisions in Article 11 to
the effect that "[t]he present Treaty is concluded for a period of 20 years", and which provided for an
eventual unilateral termination of the Treaty, had to be be taken to have determined a permanent
frontier, since there was nothing in the 1955 Treaty to indicate that the boundary agreed was to be
provisional or temporary; on the contrary, it bore all the hallmarks of finality. According to the Court,
the establishment of this boundary had to be considered as a fact which, from the outset, had had a
legal life of its own, independent of the fate of the 1955 Treaty. Accordingly, the Court found that the
disputed area belonged to Chad.
Post-judgment developments
On April 4, 1994 the two parties signed an agreement on the practical modalities of execution of the
judgement rendered on February 3, 1994, which provided for the complete withdrawal of Libyan troops
from the disputed territory to be observed by a United Nations observer group. On May 30, 1994,
representatives of the two parties jointly declared that the withdrawal had been completed.

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