Somalia on Monday submited a response in the maritime dispute case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands as the deadline for the filing the written pleadings.
The submission, to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, is in a bid to prove that the current sea boundary dispute with Kenya to resolve before the court.
Attorney-General Ahmed Ali Dahir and his team tabled geographical, seismic data and evidence of the case.
“#Somalia submitted the reply in the maritime delimitation in the Indian Ocean (Somalia vs Kenya) case @CIJ_ICJ today at the Hague on time. Somalia Agent: Ambassador Ali Faqi made the submission on behalf of Somalia. I was present at the submission,” Dahir said in a post on his Twitter account.
#Somalia submitted the reply in the maritime delimitation in the Indian Ocean (Somalia vs Kenya) case @CIJ_ICJ today at the Hague on time. Somalia Agent: Ambassador Ali Faqi made the submission on behalf of Somalia. I was present at the submission.
— Amed Ali Dahir (@AhmedAliDahir) June 18, 2018
Somalia wins first round of the hearing
Last year, Somalia won its bid to resolve a case over a maritime dispute before the ICJ.
Judges at the ICJ dismissed claims fronted by Kenya’s lawyers that there exists an alternative method of resolving the matter.
Somalia wants the court to demarcate the maritime boundary, and to determine the exact geographical coordinates as an extension of its southern borders.
Kenya, on the other hand, wants the border to run in parallel along the line of latitude on its eastern border. That gives Kenya the larger share of the maritime area and it had already sold mining licenses to international companies.
At stake is the potentially lucrative narrow triangular stretch of 100,000 square kilometres of offshore territory believed to contain large oil and gas deposits.
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