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  • Chile and Peru to present redrawn maps to the UN

    Peru have decided to jointly present maps delineating the countries’ maritime boundary to the United Nations (UN), according to Chilean Foreign Minister Heraldo Muñoz. The new maps have been adjusted to reflect the decision of the International Court of Justice, which ruled in favour of Peru regarding their disputed maritime boundary on January 27, 2014.

    Muñoz did not mention the recent controversy over the map regarding the still-unclear land border between the two countries. When the new maps were officially unveiled in Lima, the Peruvian maps showed a disputed area of land adjacent to the disputed maritime area known as the ‘land triangle’ to be Peruvian territory. Chilean authorities rejected the Peruvian map, arguing that Chile controlled the land triangle. However, Muñoz claimed that the maps marking the maritime boundary would be presented to the UN despite the controversy, stating that, “the map presented by Peru showing the disputed territory as theirs is unrelated to the works produced on the maritime border by our two nations’ joint team.”

    https://www.dur.ac.uk/ibru/news/boundary_news/?itemno=22227&rehref=%2Fibru%2F&resubj=Boundary+news+Headlines

    #Chili #Pérou #frontières
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    • http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/01/economist-explains-21

      ON JANUARY 27th the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave its ruling in a case brought in 2008 by Peru, which claimed around 38,000 sq km of the Pacific Ocean from Chile. In the run-up to the verdict, both Peruvians and Chileans were transfixed by the issue. In a judgment that seemed arbitrary but broadly fair, the court allowed both sides to claim victory.

      The dispute goes back to the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), a conflict over control of the nitrate industry in the Atacama desert, in which Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia, annexing Bolivia’s coastal province of Antafogasta and the Peruvian provinces of Tacna, Arica and Tarapacá. Chile was supposed to organise a plebiscite after ten years in which the populations of Tacna and Arica would decide which country they wanted to belong to. It failed to do this; American mediation in 1929 awarded Tacna to Peru and Arica to Chile and fixed the land boundary between the two countries. In the 1980s Peru’s diplomats began to argue that whereas the land border was settled, the maritime boundary wasn’t. Under the Santiago Declaration of 1952 Chile, Ecuador and Peru agreed notional maritime boundaries of 200 miles, aimed mainly at scaring off outsiders, such as Aristotle Onassis’s whaling fleet. The de facto boundary ran due west from the land border. Since the coast forms an elbow at the border, swinging north-west in Peru, this boundary was in Chile’s favour. Peru asked the court for three things: to fix a new boundary running equidistant between the two countries’ coasts; that the boundary should start at Punta Concordia, where the land border hits the sea, and not at Border Marker No 1 (Hito 1), 250 metres to the north; and to confirm as Peruvian an “external triangle” of 29,000 sq km lying more than 200 miles west of Chile, but less than 200 miles from Peru’s coast.