Territorial Disputes and State Responsibility on Land and at Sea

According to well-established rules of international law, a State exercises sovereignty on its land territory and its territorial sea and sovereign rights and jurisdiction in other relevant maritime zones. Territorial sovereignty involves the possibility to act on a territory and to exclude other States from acting on it. Sovereign rights at sea entail exclusiveness as to the exploration and exploitation of resources, thereby excluding all other States from such activities (though not from the maritime space where such activities take place). Consequently, whenever a State acts on the territory or in the maritime zones of another State without the latter’s permission, it commits a breach of the relevant rules, entailing its international responsibility. Yet this scheme may be put in doubt in the case of territorial disputes, both on land and at sea. A territorial dispute on land usually arises from wrongful occupation, but it may also be due to the absence of a demarcated boundary. In the first case, there will usually be one State having a “legally stronger” claim on the contested territory, even though both States may be acting in good faith. The situation is different at sea, where disputes usually arise out of the need to delimit previously undelimited sea areas. Till their delimitation, disputed sea areas may be considered as belonging to either of the parties to the dispute, without there being one with a stronger claim. The paper proposes to examine cases of land and sea territorial disputes, in order to establish the rights that may be exercised, pending the solution of the dispute, by the States claiming sovereignty or jurisdiction and limitations thereof. In the light of these findings, a conclusion as to the responsibility (and the eventual reparation due) of such States for acts committed in contested land or sea areas will be drawn.