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Uphold Ghana’s position on boundary dispute with Cote d’Ivoire – Gloria Akuffo

The Attorney General and Minister of Justice Gloria Akufo argued that Cote d’Ivoire’s claim is unrealistic and without legal and geographical basis, to the extent that it should be dismissed in its entirety.

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She made this plea when Ghana started making her oral arguments on Monday February 6, 2017.

“Ghana, respectfully, asks you to affirm the customary equidistance boundary as our maritime boundary. In carrying out your task, you are assisted by a wealth of maps and charts which set out this boundary and which have been made available to you,” she said.

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According to Ms Akuffo, the case was “not that of maritime delimitation but rather a request to declare the existence of a boundary, to which the parties have themselves long agreed and delimited in practice and in consequence”.

“Ghana asks this Special Chamber not to be swayed by the rather extravagant case Cote d’Ivoire seeks to present here by relying on a bisector theory and its related maps to create a huge area as the so-called area in dispute,” the Attorney-General prayed the court in her opening address at the ITLOS in Hamburg yesterday.

She argued that Cote d’Ivoire’s claim is unrealistic and without legal and geographical basis, to the extent that it should be dismissed in its entirety.

“After five decades of agreement and reliance, the plausible dispute, if any, is the much narrower dispute between the parties competing equidistance lines."

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“Ghana, therefore, invites the Special Chamber to uphold what the parties have long observed in practice and under their respective domestic laws,” the Attorney-General said.

Ghana’s legal and technical team is led by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice Gloria Akufo.

The immediate past Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, is also present.

She formally introduced Ms Akuffo to the Special Chamber as taking over from her as an agent of Ghana.

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The first and the second rounds of oral arguments will come off from February 6 to 10, 2017 and February 13 to 16, 2017, respectively.

The President of the Special Chamber constituted to deal with the dispute, Judge Boualem Bouguetaia, is presiding over the hearing.

Other members of the panel hearing the case are judges Rüdiger Wolfrum, Germany, and Jin-Hyun Paik, the Republic of Korea.

Ad hoc judges Thomas Mensah, Ghana, and Ronny Abraham, France, were selected by Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, respectively, per the rules of the ITLOS.

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