Bangladesh-Myanmar Maritime Delimitation
Hearing continues for 3rd day
The hearing in the Bangladesh-Myanmar maritime delimitation dispute continued for the third day yesterday in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in German city of Hamburg.
Bangladesh's counsels argued for delimitation of exclusive economic zone and continental shelf within 200 Nautical Miles (NM).
Counsel Prof Philippe Sands presented the rules and principles of international law applicable for the delimitation of Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and continental shelf, according to a Foreign Ministry press release.
He discussed the relevant laws of UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS), legislative history of the Convention of 1982 to stress the obligation of the tribunal for achieving equitable solution without giving priority to equidistance method.
Prof Sands referred to two recent cases on Nicaragua vs Honduras decided by ICJ and Guinea/Guinea Bissau Arbitration decided by Court of Arbitration, where alternative method was used for achieving equitable solution.
The Bangladesh counsel urged the Tribunal to appreciate the geographical position of Bangladesh before applying the relevant laws and practices in this case.
Another counsel Larry Martin in his arguments concentrated on giving various examples and reasoning as to why equidistance does not give equitable result to Bangladesh vis-à-vis India and Myanmar.
Martin illustrated to the judges the inequity that would result if equidistance is applied in the case between Bangladesh and Myanmar due to extreme concavity faced by Bangladesh.
He justified his arguments with case laws like North Sea Case & Guinea/Guinea Bissau Arbitration as well as with state practices, like, Senegal/Gambia, Dominica/France, France/Monaco, Malaysia/Brunei and so on to show that, concavity has been always given special consideration for discarding equidistance in maritime delimitation.
Martin argued that Bangladesh, having a long coastline which faces only the sea, deserves something equitable, not a cut-off by neighbouring countries.
After the presentation of Martin, another lawyer for Bangladesh Paul Reichler continued the arguments and specifically mentioned about Myanmar's approach of drawing provisional equidistance line ignoring Saint Martin's Island, an integral feature of Bangladesh's coast.
He described various rules and judicial precedents like, Dubai/Sharjah Case, Rumania/Ukraine Case and Myanmar/India (Andaman Nicobor) maritime delimitation agreement in favour of giving full effect to Saint Martin's Island.
Reichler also elaborated Bangladesh's un-rebutted and uncontested entitlement to outer continental shelf on geological and geomorphological ground which demands an alternative of equidistance method for delimitation of its EEZ and Continentals Shelf within 200 NM.
According to the Foreign Ministry press release, yesterday's hearing stressed on the exclusion of equidistance due to its distorting effect in the present case and requested the Tribunal to delimit the 200 NM EEZ and Continental Shelf.
The method proposed by Bangladesh, which is angle bi-sector method will be presented to the judges with reasoning by Prof James Crawford in the afternoon when Bangladesh's counsel Prof Payan Akhavan of McGill University gave his presentation on the subject of the Tribunal's jurisdiction and show that there can be no doubt that the Tribunal has jurisdiction over this dispute in its entirety.
The Bangladesh team to the hearing is being led by Foreign Minister Dipu Moni.
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