african national borders are afflicted by a battalion of troubles that straddle villages and communities. These can include military skirmishes, cattle rustling, terrorism, secessionist movements, smuggling, cultural violence, people trafficking, irredentism and agrarian revolts .
boundary line disputes have been a reality on the continent through the millennium. Precolonial Africa was hardly a typeset of harmony and bliss between african peoples. Most kingdoms paid care to territorial master and did adapt some accurate boundaries. But molding disputes are not the preserve of Africa, as the holocene battle between the Ukraine and Russia attests .
But Africa surely has its own peculiar set of problems, most by dint of the Berlin Conference which partitioned the continent into lucrative pieces for the colonisers. But the conference never meant to achieve a meaningful boundary line of Africa. As Lord Salisbury admitted not lone was the boundary line largely arbitrary, but the map exercise was far from a accurate art.
Pre-independence Africa watched Europeans :
… drawing lines upon maps where no white man ’ second feet always trod .
nowadays, close to 100 active agent border disputes exist across the continent. Rising nationalism, population and environmental pressures mean that the site is likely to get worse. Unless, that is, an army of autochthonal peace practitioners work close with available pan-Africanist leaders and statesmen to douse and resolve tensions .
Tensions abound – north, south, east and west
In East Africa there are tensions between a numeral of countries. They include :
- conflict over the Ilemi Triangle between Sudan and Kenya ;
- the Nadapal boundary challenge between Kenya and South Sudan ;
- the dispute over Lake Malawi between Tanzania and Malawi ;
- the quarrel over the Mingino Islands between Kenya and Uganda ;
- the Badme district dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia ; and
- frame disputes between Sudan and South Sudan .
holocene west african boundaries and borders disputes include :
- land and nautical disputes between the Cameroon and Nigeria ;
- territorial disputes on the Island of Mbanié between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea ;
- the frontier challenge between Burkina Faso and Niger frontier dispute ; and
- the Benin–Niger frontier challenge .
In North Africa, boundary disputes and contest territories abound. Examples include Moroccan claims over spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla. There is the durable Morocco and Mauritania struggle against the Polisario Front, while Libya and Algeria have intervened in favor of the Saharan national dismissal drift .
Algeria and Morocco accuse each early of harbouring militants and condoning arms smuggling. Libya appears to claim about 32,000 sq km that apparently is under algerian control. Sudan claims, but Egypt de facto administers, security and economic exploitation of the Halaib region north of the 22nd latitude boundary .
Southern Africa has its own set up of disputes. The controversy between Namibia and South Africa over the Orange River has been described as one of the oldest boundary disputes in the world. There are tensions between Swaziland and South Africa. The democratic Republic of the Congo ( DRC ) accuses Angola of shifting monuments on their coarse limit .
namibian exploitation of the Okavango River has been a source of discrepancy with Botswana. Unresolved boundaries afflict portions of the Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia borders .
central African states ’ ongoing limit problems include location of the boundary in the wide Congo River between the Republic of Congo and the DRC. Uganda and the DRC continue to dispute the Rukwanzi Island in Lake Albert and early areas on the Semliki River with hydrocarbon electric potential .
As though quarrel over territories and boundaries is not challenge enough, separatist tendencies aiming at the creation of more independent states are prevailing .
Our research shows that presently there are approximately 58 potential secessionist territories in 29 out of the sum 57 mugwump states of Africa. These apparition states are championed by at least 83 political associations and press groups.
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such statistics are intelligibly alarming. They unfortunately portend an increase in civil conflicts .
Dispelling the pre-colonial harmony myth
Precolonial Africa was very sensitive to migration tensions and territorial conflicts – possibly even on a wider scale than today. african cultures relied on city walls and other rigid boundary markers. This is reflected both in oral and written literature .
Recent satellite imagination american samoa well as archaeological studies provide overwhelming evidence that ancient Africa relied on accurate limit markers separating states and political groups. For exemplify, there were about 10,000 town walls, 25 % or more of them on presently deserted sites, between Lake Chad and the Atlantic Ocean .
There were besides the 160km-long Sungbo ’ s Eredo rampart, the 45km-long Orile Owu wall and walls wholly surrounding the pre-European infuence cities of Kwiambana, Old Ningi and Gogoram .
African Union efforts to find a solution
Commendably, the African Union ( AU ) has been committed to an audacious margin broadcast since 2007. This may go down ampere one of the most meaning legal events on the continent. The announcement demands an Africa-wide exercise to demarcate international land and nautical boundaries .
But, in credit line with the “ run before you walk ” reputation of the AU, it has set an excessively ambitious timetable and several deadlines have already been missed. participation in the enterprise has been patchy at best. It is disgraceful that the program, primitively envisaged to have been completed before 2015, has arguably not achieved more than one-quarter of its objectives .
The complete boundary line and line of Africa is a herculean tax. We are talking about an area of approximately 6.1 million square kilometer and 28,000 miles of international boundaries .
Reuters/Goran Tomasevic
In many cases the publish is what precisely was owned and passed over to african states from the colonial powers. Hence, fondness legal doctrines that lawyers like to throw about, such as the therefore call uti possidetis juris, are no more than a coherent tautology. This seeks to freeze all territories to a snap stroke of the area states were given on the day of independence .
african states have been making broad use of the International Court of Justice ( ICJ ) and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Of the 18 contentious cases between african states submitted to the ICJ, 13 business territorial or boundary disputes .
cogent criticisms have been levelled at both courts. These include the accusation that they have been applying Eurocentric international law in a way that compromises the pastime of african countries. The composition and staff of both is besides largely unrepresentative of Africa .
fortunately, there are examples of beneficial commit among african states to deal with boundary problems. In hypothesis, limit tensions could be addressed through assorted autochthonal mechanisms. These include the Councils of Elders and the use of peace radios and peace newspapers by East Africa ’ s Intergovernmental Authority on Development and by the Economic Community of West african States ( ECOWAS ) .
The AU itself has a Panel of the Wise capable of dealing with crisis arising over boundaries. There are besides singular early warn systems in plaza, including one for ECOWAS and the AU .
What to do when a dispute matures
taste of local anesthetic realities is one of the strong points to opt for settlement by autochthonal means .
When a challenge matures adequate for political attention, governments should ideally follow the stick to steps :
- Declare an open dispute ;
- Involve apposite interstate commissions ;
- Seek the help of a neutral survey group to discover and delineate the issues ;
- Initiate technical studies and hold seminars ;
- Initiate direct negotiations ;
- Involve the allow regional economic commission ;
- Seek, or allow, the intervention by the AU ;
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- Implement an ad hoc African arbitral mechanism ;
- resort to judicial mechanisms such as the African Court of Justice or the ICJ .
There is besides oscilloscope for increasing the engagement of autochthonal experts, civil company organisations adenine well as more taxonomic habit of plebiscites in dealing with territorial disputes .
