Territorial conflict between Belize and Guatemala

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Location of Belize and Guatemala in Central America

The territorial conflict between Belize and Guatemala is a dispute between the two neighboring Central American states of Belize and Guatemala . Since the independence of Guatemala in 1821, this has been claiming Belizean territory.

history

Beginnings and the British Honduras Colony

After the discovery of America by European sailors, all of Central America was gradually taken over by Spain. From the 17th century onwards, more and more British settlers ( Baymen ) settled on the coast of Belize, initially devoting themselves to piracy and later to logging and plantation management. In addition, many African slaves were imported. Although Belize nominally remained under Spanish rule, the British colonists gained more and more independence. An attempt by the Spanish colonial power to regain control of the area during the Napoleonic coalition wars failed in the battle of St. George's Caye on September 10, 1798. During the South American Wars of Independence , Guatemala gained independence in 1821 (initially as part of Mexico, and from 1823 to 1839 as part of the Central American Confederation ). The status of Belize remained unclear. Spain had never formally recognized Britain's sovereignty over Belize, and neither did the Latin American republics emerging from the Spanish colonies. From the 1830s at the latest, however, the British government regarded the area between Río Hondo in the north and Río Sarstún (Sarstoon River) in the south as British property.

After the United Kingdom had previously intervened in the interests of the planter settlements (in particular with the implementation of the abolition of slavery 1833-1838 and the provision of an elected assembly for self-government in 1854), a convention was concluded between the government of Guatemala and in April 1859 the British government across the border of Guatemala to the British plantation colony. The British interpreted this as a formal recognition of British rule over Belize by Guatemala. However, the contract contained an article (No. 7) in which the construction of a road between the capital of Guatemala and Belize was agreed. A British commission subsequently sent found that the construction of such a road link would be far more expensive than initially assumed. So, in 1863, another draft treaty was drafted, in which Britain undertook to pay £ 50,000 to allow the road to be built. This second treaty was never ratified by Guatemala and later British offers (1895: £ 50,000 to build a railway from Belize to the Guatemalan border, 1934: build a road on the same property, 1946: payment of £ 50,000 to offset all Guatemala's claims) were made rejected by Guatemala. On this was based Guatemala's later legalistic argument that the treaty of 1859 was null and void , while the British side argued that this only concerned paragraph 7 of the treaty. In 1862, Belize was formally declared a colony of British Honduras by the British government in a unilateral act .

In the ensuing period, claims to British Honduras were made by both Mexico and Guatemala. Mexico claimed the territory from British Honduras to the Sibun River , but waived this claim in a treaty with Great Britain in 1893. Mexico later stated that it would resume its claims should Guatemala succeed in its claims on Belizean territory. On August 25 and 26, 1931 there was a diplomatic exchange of notes between the Guatemalan and British governments, in which the border between British Honduras and Guatemala was established.

Developments from 1945 to Belize's independence in 1981

Map of British Honduras 1965

In September 1945, when it was foreseeable that British colonial rule would end in the not-too-distant future, Guatemala incorporated an article into its constitution designating British Honduras as Guatemalan territory. in the post-war decades there was a gradual decolonization of British Honduras. From 1961 negotiations took place between Great Britain and Guatemala, which ended without result in 1963, whereupon Guatemala temporarily broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain. Even an attempt at mediation by the United States did not lead to any result. Negotiations began again in 1969, but ended abruptly after Great Britain sent the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal (R09) with 8,000 soldiers to amphibious exercises on the coast of British Honduras in 1972 to counter an allegedly threatened Guatemalan invasion. On June 1, 1973, the colony was renamed Belize .

The other Latin American states initially supported Guatemala's claims. However, Guatemala's international position has been weakened by the country's chronic political instability and repeated coups. Under Fidel Castro , Cuba was the first state in Latin America to speak out in favor of an independent Belize in December 1975. The Mexican President Luis Echeverría Álvarez warned in 1976 that the claims of Guatemala would destabilize Central America. From 1976 Panama's President Omar Torrijos campaigned for the independence of Belize and in 1979 the Sandinista government of Nicaragua declared its support for an independent Belize. On September 21, 1981, Belize was granted independence by Great Britain without an agreement with Guatemala having been reached. When the 36th General Assembly of the United Nations voted in September 1981, Guatemala was completely isolated in its position. Belize's application for membership of the United Nations was adopted on September 25, 1981 with 144 to one (the voice of Guatemala).

After Belize gained independence

Territorial claims of Guatemala after 1999

After Belize gained independence, British troops remained in the country. After training their own Belizean armed forces, most of the British military left the country in January 1995. However, some military specialists remained in Belize even after 1995. From 1988 there were negotiations between Guatemala and Belize, in which Great Britain had observer status. In 1991, Guatemala diplomatically recognized Belize.

On 24 January 2001, the Government of Guatemala revised their previous territorial claim to all Belize and reduced this to the region between the Sibun River and the Río Sarstún (Sarstoon River), on the grounds that the area historically for Guatemalan Verapaz department heard the was not affected by the earlier Spanish-British and British-Guatemalan treaties of 1859.

On December 8, 2008, after the mediation of the Organization of American States (OAS) , representatives of Belize and Guatemala signed an agreement in Washington, DC , according to which the territorial dispute should be decided by the International Court of Justice . In addition, a referendum should be held in both countries on the question of whether the decision should be referred to the International Court of Justice. A referendum was held in Guatemala on April 15, 2018. With a turnout of around 25%, around 95% of voters voted for the decision to be transferred to the International Court of Justice. In Belize, the idea of ​​a decision by the International Court of Justice was less popular, because in the best case scenario only the status quo would have been confirmed, in the worst case scenario there was a risk of losing a large part of the national territory. The referendum took place in Belize on May 8, 2019. With a turnout of 65%, 55% of voters also voted in favor of the International Court of Justice.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b The Guatemala-British Honduras Dispute . In: The International Law Quarterly . tape 2 , no. 1 . Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 1948, p. 53-57 , JSTOR : 763113 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c d Tim Merrill: Belize: A Country Study. Washington. GPO for the Library of Congress, 1992, accessed May 11, 2019 .
  3. ↑ No 2946, 1932 League of Nations - Treaty Series: Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Guatemala: Exchange of Notes respecting the Boundary between British Honduras and Guatemala, with Annexes. Guatemala, August 25 and 26, 1931. Retrieved May 11, 2019 .
  4. ↑ United Nations General assembly Thirty-Sixth Session: 13th Plenary Meeting: Agenda Item 20: Admission of New Members to the United Nations. September 25, 1981, accessed May 11, 2019 .
  5. ^ Resolutions and decisions of the Security Council: B. Motion by Belize. (pdf) pp. 36–37 , accessed on May 11, 2019 .
  6. ^ Dion E. Phillips: The Military of Belize. (No longer available online.) December 28, 2002, archived from the original on June 10, 2016 ; accessed on May 11, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Elihu Lauterpacht, Stephen Schwebel, Shabtai Rosenne, Francisco Orrego Vicuña: Legal Opinion on Guatemala's TerritorialClaim to Belize. (pdf) The Government Printer, Belmopan, Belize, November 2001, accessed on May 11, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Signing of Special Agreement between Belize andGuatemalaDecember 8, 2008. (pdf) oas.org, accessed on May 11, 2019 (English).
  9. ↑ Guatemala votes to send territory dispute with Belize to ICJ. Deutsche Welle, April 14, 2018, accessed on May 11, 2019 .
  10. ^ Ruben Alexander Schuster: Guatemala in search of orientation. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, May 24, 2018, accessed on May 11, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Belize, April 10, 2019: International Court of Justice drawn the border with Guatemala. Database and search engine for direct democracy (sudd.ch), accessed on May 11, 2019 .