Wednesday, November 12, 2014
The House Foreign Relations Committee wants Somalia to be declared a hostile state after it referred a dispute over our maritime boundary in October to the International Court of Justice.
As a result, all Somali refugees in Kenya might be deported and Kenya might withdraw from Amisom.
This would be an incredible over-reaction to a court case that Kenya might conceivably win.
This dispute over the maritime boundary has been rumbling on for years but it has now taken on added urgency because of the huge deposits of hydrocarbons all the way from Mozambique to Somalia.
Technically Somalia is right and Kenya is wrong. A basic principle of maritime law is that a boundary should extend into the ocean at a right angle to the coastline on the shared border.
This would take the Somalia maritime border southeast into territory that we traditionally consider Kenyan.
The ICJ might still rule in Kenya’s favour and declare that the maritime border should run due east. A mitigating factor for Kenya is that the Tanzanian maritime border runs due east.
But this is a very grey area that if anything favours Somalia. It would be absurd to declare Somalia a hostile state on this basis.