The Resolution of Territorial Conflicts. The Case of The Facilitation Process Belize-Guatemala (2000-2020)

Abstract

Guatemala and Britain signed a boundary treaty in 1859 delimiting the border between the settlement of Belize and Guatemala, but a dispute over the implementation of a clause in the treaty proved unresolvable, and in the 1940s Guatemala declared the treaty void and claimed the entire territory of Belize. Attempts by Britain and later Belize (which became independent in 1981) to resolve the dispute were fruitless. In 2000 Belize and Guatemala created and executed a Facilitation Process for resolving the dispute under the aegis of the OAS. The Facilitators succeeded in devising proposals agreed to by both countries, but Guatemala later reneged and refused to comply. But the Facilitators had also proposed that if their proposals were not accepted the parties agreed to submit the dispute to the ICJ. How this was finally achieved in 2019 is the subject of this article.