Territorial Dispute (Libya vs.

Chad)
Libya invades a useless parcel of land (Aouzou Strip) in the 1970s and claims the territory as
its own. Chad disagrees as supposed to a treaty in 1955 made between Libya and France. The
Aozou Strip contains rich deposits of uranium. Libya says that treaty is invalid because of
coercion and the inhabitants of the region identified as Libyan. Chad claims that treaty is
valid and the treaty set a border. Libya was backed by USSR and Chad by America. There
were hostilities.
On August 31, 1990, Libya submitted a compromis to the ICJ, which included an official
letter and a two-page framework agreement signed by the two countries a year before
signalling that if they were unable to settle the dispute politically in a year after the signing of
that framework agreement (notified to the Organization of African Unity), they would submit
their dispute to the ICJ.
The question before the ICJ was How to delimit the frontier boundary between Chad and
Libya, taking into consideration a series of treaties which established such a boundary and
subsequent state practice between Chad and Libya which arguably may have called the
boundary into question.
. The position of each country before the Court was as follows: Libya's case dealt with the
attribution of territory, and it proceeded on the belief that there was no boundary between the
two countries. Therefore, Libya wanted the Court to demarcate a border. Chad proceeded on
the belief that there was indeed a boundary, and it wanted the Court to declare the location of
that boundary.
The Court itself proceeded by using the Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborliness
between the French Republic and the United Kingdom of Libya, otherwise known as the
1955 Treaty. This complex agreement actually dealt with a variety of issues, but in terms of
boundaries, the Court used Article 3 as its basis.
Through intense and complicated examination of the 1955 Treaty and its history, the
International Court of Justice ruled in early February, 1994 in favour of Chad. In a 16-1 vote,
the justices declared that even though the original 1955 Treaty between Libya and France was
for a period of 20 years, there was nothing to indicate that the border agreed to was to be
temporary in any way. Therefore, the current boundary between Chad and Libya, with the
Aozou Strip belonging to Chad, stood. Chad maintained, however, that Libya still had
positioned troops in the Strip (now definitive Chadian territory), and that it should respect the
Court's ruling and abide by its provisions. This was accomplished later in 1990.
In the memorial it was used to establish that Interpretation must be based, above all, upon the
text of the treaty.