Harun ur Rashid
Bangladesh went to the Permanent Court of
Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague on 08 October
2009 seeking judgment under the dispute clause of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS). The submission of documents and oral hearings from both India and Bangladesh was concluded in December 2013 and the Court
officially conveyed the result to both parties on 7
July 2014.
The judgment is final and cannot be appealed
against. Among the five arbitrators only the Indian
arbitrator delivered a dissenting judgment. India
accepted the judgment and reportedly said that the
judgment would further enhance goodwill between
the two countries by putting an end to a long
standing issue. It went in favour of Bangladesh
because Bangladesh has been awarded 19,467 sq
km of the total 25,602 sq km sea area (76 per
cent), leaving 6,135 sq km (24 per cent) to India.
The judgment also allows Bangladesh a 200-mile
exclusive economic zone, the continental shelf
beyond the 200-mile economic zone and access to
the open sea, thus preventing it from turning into a
‘sea-locked country’. Bangladesh’s awarded area
reportedly includes 10 off-shore blocs in the west
which were in dispute with India; 10 per cent of the
six blocs went to India. It is noted that the disputed
maritime area of 25,602 sq km in the Bay of
Bengal with Bangladesh constitutes probably only
about 3-5 per cent of the maritime area of India’s
vast coastline, stretching east from the Bay of
Bengal, the Indian Ocean and to the Arabian Sea in
the west. For Bangladesh, the area in the west with
India is 100 per cent because there is no other
maritime area available for Bangladesh to its west
and it is vital for Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal
to have this area under its jurisdiction.
The first session on Indo-Bangladesh sea boundary
talks took place in 1974 in Dhaka at the official
level. Later, several meetings took place at the
level of Foreign Secretaries. When the Foreign
Secretaries could not resolve the differences
because of the methods of delimiting the boundary
between the two sides, it was elevated to the
Foreign Ministers’ level in 1975 but remained
inconclusive. It was reported that at the
Commonwealth Summit in Jamaica in May 1975,
Bangladesh President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
proposed arbitration to resolve the issue to Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi but India rejected it.
Although the sea boundary talks were renewed in
1978, 1982, 2008 (under the caretaker
government), and in March 2009 under the Hasina
government, it could not be resolved because of
the differences over boundary delimitations. When
the Hasina government found that the talks had
stalled, it had no option but to look out for the
involvement of a third party to resolve the dispute.
Finally the Hasina government decided to lodge the
dispute with the Court of Arbitration under Article
287 (the dispute machinery clause) of UNCLOS.
India had ratified the UN Convention in 1995 and
Bangladesh in 2001, and are both therefore bound
by the provisions of the UNCLOS.
The judgment stands out for several following
reasons. First, both Bangladesh and India have
settled the maritime boundary through the legal
mechanism under the UNCLOS, which
demonstrates that the two countries are committed
to the peaceful settlement of disputes. It is not a
complete victory for Bangladesh because India has
won on some issues. It is however a victory for
fairness and justice. The judgment is a win for
international law which both countries have always
respected. Second, the judgment substantially
contributes to the development of maritime
international law. There was an apprehension
among some jurists that judgment by the Court of
Arbitration under UNCLOS would lead to the
fragmentation of maritime law, but this has been
found to be unfounded. Rather, the judgment
reflects the great advantages of consistency and
transparency by adhering to judicial precedents.
Third, the peaceful and amicable settlement of the
maritime dispute between Bangladesh and India
could be an example in the international arena at a
time when in many parts of the world maritime
disputes are emerging as major flash points. For
example, in the South China Sea, disputed maritime
boundaries between China and its neighbours,
Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, and in the
East China Sea, between South Korea and Japan
and Japan and China, are causing grave tension.
Finally, the judgment may assist Bangladesh to
concretise the Japanese proposal for a Bay of
Bengal Industrial Growth Belt (BIG-B) initiative
with India and Myanmar for Japanese trade and
investment. It can usher in a new era of
cooperation between maritime neighbours in the Bay of Bengal.
No comments:
Post a Comment