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II. Substantive International Law - Second Partv
1. TERRITORY OF STATES
1.2. Boundaries
1.2.1.Land Boundaries

¤ Frontier Dispute, Judgment
(Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali)
I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 554

Cf. also: The principle of uti possidetis

[pp. 563-564] The Parties have argued at length over how the present dispute is to be classified in terms of a distinction sometimes made by legal writers between "frontier disputes" or "delimitation disputes", and "disputes as to attribution of territory". According to this distinction, the former refer to delimitation operations affecting what has been described as "a portion of land which is not geographically autonomous" whereas the object of the latter is the attribution of sovereignty over the whole of a geographical entity. Both Parties seem ultimately to have accepted that the present dispute belongs rather to the category of delimitation disputes, even though they fail to agree on the conclusions to be drawn from this. In fact, however, in the great majority of cases, including this one, the distinction outlined above is not so much a difference in kind but rather a difference of degree as to the way the operation in question is carried out. The effect of any delimitation, no matter how small the disputed area crossed by the line, is an apportionment of the areas of land lying on either side of the line. In the present case, it may be noted that the Special Agreement, in Article I, refers not merely to a line to be drawn, but to a disputed "area", which it defines as consisting of a "band" of territory encompassing the "region" of the Béli. Moreover, the effect of any judicial decision rendered either in a dispute as to attribution of territory or in a delimitation dispute, is necessarily to establish a frontier. It is not without interest that certain recent codifying conventions have used formulae such as a treaty which "establishes a boundary" or a "boundary established by a treaty" to cover both delimitation treaties and treaties ceding or attributing territory (cf. Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Art. 62; Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties, Art. 11). In both cases, a clarification is made of a given legal situation with declaratory effect from the date of the legal title upheld by the court. This clarification is itself a new element; it was because the parties wished to see that element introduced that they went to court at all. If there had been no dispute or uncertainty, they would not have wished to do so. Hence it is not so much the nature and qualification of the present dispute as the Statute of the Court and the terms of the Special Agreement which must determine the nature and extent of the Chamber's task and functions in this case.

[p. 582] At the present stage of its reasoning the Chamber can confine itself to the statement of a principle. Whether in frontier delimitations or in international territorial conflicts, maps merely constitute information which varies in accuracy from case to case; of themselves, and by virtue solely of their existence, they cannot constitute a territorial title, that is, a document endowed by international law with intrinsic legal force for the purpose of establishing territorial rights. Of course, in some cases maps may acquire such legal force, but where this is so the legal force does not arise solely from their intrinsic merits: it is because such maps fall into the category of physical expressions of the will of the State or States concerned. This is the case, for example, when maps are annexed to an official text of which they form an integral part. Except in this clearly defined case, maps are only extrinsic evidence of varying reliability or unreliability which may be used, along with other evidence of a circumstantial kind, to establish or reconstitute the real facts.

[pp. 632-633] It should again be pointed out that the Chamber's task in this case is to indicate the line of the frontier inherited by both States from the colonizers on their accession to independence. For the reasons explained above, this task amounts to ascertaining and defining the lines which formed the administrative boundaries of the colony of Upper Volta on 31 December 1932. Admittedly, the Parties could have modified the frontier existing on the critical date by a subsequent agreement. If the competent authorities had endorsed the agreement of 15 January 1965, it would have been unnecessary for the purpose of the present case to ascertain whether that agreement was of a declaratory or modifying character in relation to the 1932 boundaries. But this did not happen, and the Chamber has received no mandate from the Parties to substitute its own free choice of an appropriate frontier for theirs. The Chamber must not lose sight either of the Court's function, which is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, nor of the fact that the Chamber was requested by the Parties in their Special Agreement not to give indications to guide them in determining their common frontier, but to draw a line, and a precise line.
As it has explained, the Chamber can resort to that equity infra legem, which both Parties have recognized as being applicable in this case (see paragraph 27 above). In this respect the guiding concept is simply that "Equity as a legal concept is a direct emanation of the idea of justice" (Continental Shelf (Tunisia/Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), I.C.J. Reports 1982, p. 60, para. 71). The Chamber would however stress more generally that to resort to the concept of equity in order to modify an established frontier would be quite unjustified. Especially in the African context, the obvious deficiencies of many frontiers inherited from colonization, from the ethnic, geographical or administrative standpoint, cannot support an assertion that the modification of these frontiers is necessary or justifiable on the ground of considerations of equity. These frontiers, however unsatisfactory they may be, possess the authority of the uti possidetis and are thus fully in conformity with contemporary international law. Apart from the case of a decision ex aequo et bono reached with the assent of the Parties, "it is not a matter of finding simply an equitable solution, but an equitable solution derived from the applicable law" (Fisheries Jurisdiction, I.C.J. Reports 1974, p. 33, para. 78). It is with a view to achieving a solution of this kind that the Chamber has to take account, not of the agreement of 15 January 1965, but of the circumstances in which that agreement was concluded.