MOGADISHU (Halbeeg News) – Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo has welcomed the rule of UN’s top court in a bitter border dispute between Somalia and Kenya, urging the leaders of Kenya to “respect the international rule of law.”
In a televised speech following the ruling, Somalia’s Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who is widely known as Farmajo, said Nairobi should “see the decision of the court as an opportunity to strengthen the relationship of the two countries”.
President Farmajo blasted the Kenyan government for years of political interference aimed at disrupting the case.
“Ever since I was elected as your president, we have faced multiple political, security, financial and diplomatic challenges. These were attempts by the Kenyan leadership to divert the Somali people and their government from their decision to deliberate this case only at the International Court of Justice (ICJ),” Farmaajo.
The leader accused of Kenyan government of waging “a military campaign violating our nation’s sovereignty and the public interest of the Somali people”.
“This military campaign included indiscriminate air and land strikes inside Somalia’s borders,” he said. “These strikes targeted the lives and properties of Somali citizens. Case in point is the death of innocent civilians, including helpless women and children, in the town of Belet-Hawo and the damages incurred upon Telecommunication Towers that belong to Somali Telecom Companies operating in Jubaland, Somalia.”
ICJ on Tuesday sided with Somalia in its dispute with neighboring Kenya over a maritime, rejecting Kenya’s boundary delimitation method and virtually all claims it presented at the UN court.
In a lengthy judgment made at The Hague on Tuesday, the Court ruled that the equidistant rule which Somalia had proposed was the legally acceptable method in settling the continental shelf boundaries contrary to Kenya’s parallel to the latitude option.
The panel of 14 judges sitting in The Hague said that Kenya had not proved that Somalia had previously agreed to its claimed border.
The ICJ ruled there was “no agreed maritime boundary” and drew a new border close to the one claimed by Somalia, although Kenya kept a part of the 100,000 square-kilometre (38,000-square-mile) area.
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