Land and Maritime Delimitation and Sovereignty over Islands (Gabon/Equatorial Guinea), Judgment, 19 May 2025 at:https://www.icj-cij.org/case/179

The International Court of Justice’s 19 May 2025 Judgment in the case between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea addresses a fairly standard dispute concerning rival claims to territory and maritime spaces. However, it addresses these in an unusual manner, on the basis of a Special Agreement that sought to provide the Court with a specific mandate not to delimit land or maritime boundaries or determine sovereignty, but to adjudicate a seemingly narrower issue: which titles had the force of law between the parties. From the exercise of this mandate, several issues of more general relevance emerge, namely the value of tailored mandates, the approach to a peculiar convention through which the parties had already allegedly resolved their dispute, and the continuing relevance of colonial concepts and documents. The Court’s decision has been widely perceived as a win for Equatorial Guinea, whose claim to three disputed islands the Court upheld. This is a plausible reading, but one that singles out one aspect of a rich and complex judgment. Initial responses seem to suggest that the parties are willing to engage in post-judgment negotiations with a view to settling their long-standing dispute peacefully.