The UN’s top court will rule in a bitter border dispute between Somalia and Kenya on Tuesday, delivering a verdict with potentially far-reaching consequences for bilateral ties and energy extraction in the region, IgbereTV reports.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), is to give its final word in a case filed by Mogadishu more than seven years ago.
A full bench of 15 judges led by US judge Joan Donoghue will hand down the verdict at the Peace Palace in The Hague at 1300 GMT.
At stake are sovereignty, undersea riches and the future of relations between two countries in one of the world’s most troubled regions.
Kenya has already lashed the ICJ as biased and announced it does not recognise the court’s binding jurisdiction.
At the heart of the dispute is the direction that the joint maritime boundary should take from the point where the land frontiers meet on the coast.
Somalia insists the boundary should follow the orientation of its land border and thus head out in a line towards the southeast.
But Kenya says its boundary runs in a straight line east — a delineation that would give it a big triangular slice of the sea.
Nairobi says it has exercised sovereignty over the area since 1979, when it proclaimed the limits of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) — a maritime territory extending up to 200 nautical miles offshore where a state has the right to exploit resources.
