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World Court Digest



I. Substantive International Law - First Part
7. LAW OF TREATIES
7.8. Interpretation

¤ Border and Transborder Armed Actions
(Nicaragua/Honduras),
Jurisdiction and Admissibility,
Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1988, p. 69

[pp. 85-86] Further confirmation of the Court's reading of Article XXXI 1 is to be found in the travaux préparatoires. In this case these must of course be resorted to only with caution, as not all the stages of the drafting of the texts at the Bogotá Conference were the subject of detailed records. The proceedings of the Conference were however published, in accordance with Article 47 of the Regulations of the Conference, in Spanish, and certain recorded discussions of Committee III of the Conference throw light particularly upon the contemporary conception of'the relationship between Article XXXI and declarations under Article 36 of the Statute.
The text which was to become Article XXXI was discussed at the meeting of Committee III held on 27 April 1948. The representative of the United States reminded the meeting that his country had previously, under Article 36, paragraph 2, of the Statute, made a declaration of acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction that included reservations; he made it clear that the United States intended to maintain those reservations in relation to the application of the Pact of Bogotá. The representative of Mexico replied that States which wished to maintain such reservations in their relations with the other parties to the Pact would have to reformulate them as reservations to the Pact, under Article LV. The representatives of Colombia and Ecuador, members of the drafting group, confirmed that interpretation. The representative of Peru asked whether an additional Article should not be added to the draft in order to specify that adhesion to the treaty would imply, as between the parties to it, the automatic removal of any reservations to declarations of acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction. The majority of Committee III considered, however, that such an Article was not necessary and the representative of Peru went on to say, after the vote, that "we should place on record what has been said here, to the effect that it is understood that adhesion is unconditional and that reservations are automatically removed" 2 (translation by the Registry).
[pp. 88-90] The second objection of Honduras to jurisdiction is based on Article XXXII of the Pact of Bogotá, which reads as follows:

"When the conciliation procedure previously established in the present Treaty or by agreement of the parties does not lead to a solution, and the said parties have not agreed upon an arbitral procedure, either of them shall be entitled to have recourse to the International Court of Justice in the manner prescribed in Article 40 of the Statute thereof. The Court shall have compulsory jurisdiction in accordance with Article 36, paragraph 1, of the said Statute."

It is the contention of Honduras that Articles XXXI and XXXII must be read together. The first is said to define the extent of the Court's jurisdiction and the second to determine the conditions under which the Court may be seised. According to Honduras it follows that the Court could only be seised under Article XXXI if, in accordance with Article XXXII, there had been a prior recourse to conciliation and lack of agreement to arbitrate, which is not the situation in the present case.
Nicaragua on the other hand contends that Article XXXI and Article XXXII are two autonomous provisions, each of which confers jurisdiction upon the Court in the cases for which it provides. It claims that Article XXXI covers all juridical disputes which, before the conclusion of the Pact, would have been subject to arbitration under the General Treaty of Inter-American Arbitration of 5 January 1929; and that Article XXXII relates to disputes, whatever their nature, previously in the domain of conciliation under the General Convention of Inter-American Conciliation of the same date. It maintains accordingly that the Court can be seised, under Article XXXI, in the cases covered by that text, without there being any requirement to ascertain whether the procedural conditions laid down, in other cases, by Article XXXII have or have not been satisfied.
Honduras's interpretation of Article XXXII runs counter to the terms of that Article. Article XXXII makes no reference to Article XXXI; under that text the parties have, in general terms, an entitlement to have recourse to the Court in cases where there has been an unsuccessful conciliation.
It is true that one qualification of this observation is required, with regard to the French text of Article XXXII, which provides that, in the circumstances there contemplated, the party has "le droit de porter la question devant la Cour". That expression might be thought to refer back to the question which might have been the subject of the dispute referred to the Court under Article XXXI. It should, however, be observed that the text uses the word "question", which leaves room for uncertainty, rather than the word "différend (dispute)", used in Article XXXI, which would have been perfectly clear. Moreover, the Spanish, English and Portuguese versions speak, in general terms, of an entitlement to have recourse to the Court and do not justify the conclusion that there is a link between Article XXXI and Article XXXII.
Moreover, Article XXXII, unlike Article XXXI, refers expressly to the jurisdiction which the Court has under Article 36, paragraph 1, of the Statute. That reference would be difficult to understand if, as Honduras contends, the sole purpose of Article XXXII were to specify the procedural conditions for bringing before the Court disputes for which jurisdiction had already been conferred upon it by virtue of the declaration made in Article XXXI, pursuant to Article 36, paragraph 2.
It is, moreover, quite clear from the Pact that the purpose of the American States in drafting it was to reinforce their mutual commitments with regard to judicial settlement. This is also confirmed by the travaux préparatoires: the discussion at the meeting of Committee III of the Conference held on 27 April 1948 has already been referred to in paragraph 37 above. At that meeting, furthermore, the delegate of Colombia explained to the Committee the general lines of the system proposed by the Sub-Committee which had prepared the draft; the Sub-Committee took the position "that the principal procedure for the peaceful settlement of conflicts between the American States had to be judicial procedure before the International Court of Justice" 3 (translation by the Registry). Honduras's interpretation would however imply that the commitment, at first sight firm and unconditional, set forth in Article XXXI would, in fact, be emptied of all content if, for any reason, the dispute were not subjected to prior conciliation. Such a solution would be clearly contrary to both the object and the purpose of the Pact.
In short, Articles XXXI and XXXII provide for two distinct ways by which access may be had to the Court. The first relates to cases in which the Court can be seised directly and the second to those in which the parties initially resort to conciliation.
In the present case, Nicaragua has relied upon Article XXXI, not Article XXXII. It is accordingly not pertinent whether the dispute submitted to the Court has previously been the subject of an attempted conciliation, nor what interpretation is given to Article XXXII in other respects, in particular as regards the nature and the subject-matter of the disputes to which that text applies. It is sufficient for the Court to find that the second objection put forward by Honduras is based upon an incorrect interpretation of that Article and, for that reason, cannot be accepted.
Article XXXI of the Pact of Bogotá thus confers jurisdiction upon the Court to entertain the dispute submitted to it. For that reason, the Court does not need to consider whether it might have jurisdiction by virtue of the declarations of acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction by Nicaragua and Honduras set out in paragraphs 23 to 25 above.

[pp. 94-95] Before proceeding further, the Court notes that the Parties have drawn attention to a discrepancy between the four texts of Article II of the Pact (English, French, Portuguese and Spanish). In the French text, what is required is that, "de l'avis de l'une des parties", i.e., "in the opinion of one of the parties", the dispute should not be susceptible of settlement by negotiation. In the English, Portuguese and Spanish texts, the corresponding phrase is "in the opinion of the parties", or the equivalent in the other two languages. For reasons which will appear, the Court's reasoning does not require the resolution of the problem posed by this textual discrepancy, and it will therefore not rehearse all the arguments that have been put forward by the Parties to explain it or to justify the preferring of one version to another.
For the purpose of determining the application in this case of Article II of the Pact, the Court will proceed on the hypothesis that the stricter interpretation should be used, i.e., that it would be necessary to consider whether the "opinion" of both Parties was that it was not possible to settle the dispute by negotiation. For this purpose the Court does not consider that it is bound by the mere assertion of the one Party or the other that its opinion is to a particular effect: it must, in the exercise of its judicial function, be free to make its own determination of that question on the basis of such evidence as is available to it.

1Article XXXI of the Pact of Bogotá.
2"Pero deben constar en actas las palabras pronunciadas aquí, acerca de que se entiende que es adhesión incondicional y que quedan removidas, automáticamente, las reservas." (Novena Conferencia Internacional Americana, Actas y Documentos, Vol. IV, p. 167).
3"La Subcomisión estimó que el procedimiento principal para el arreglo pacífíco de los conflictos entre los Estados Americanos ha de ser el procedimiento judicial ante la Corte Internacional de Justicia; ..." (Novena Conferencia Internacional Americana, Actas y Documentos, Vol. IV, p. 156).