This panel was convened at 11:30 a.m., Thursday, June 25, 2020, by its moderator James Kateka of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, who introduced the panelists: Mamadou Hébié of the International Court of Justice; Marc Weller of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law; Milena Sterio of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law; and Nawi Ukabiala of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
I. THE MEANING AND SCOPE OF TERRITORIAL CONFLICTSThe notion of 'territorial conflict' may embrace various kinds of disagreements. In its broad sense, it includes all types of disputes relating to territory. In this meaning, disputes as to ownership as well as to use of territory can be included in the notion of 'territorial conflict'. The latter includes potential trans-boundary environmental harm. For example, conflicts arising from the extraterritorial exercise of state competencies in foreign land could also be included within this large definition. Territorial conflicts occur because the world is essentially divided into states exercising their sovereignty over a given portion of it. The spatial division of the Earth into different areas and with different legal statuses is the product of human activity throughout history. Some of these areas are subject to the appropriation by states, but others, such as the high seas, are not. For the former, states may have sovereignty over them, although other legal regimes have also been applicable. The area in which sovereignty exists or may exist is essentially land and is generally referred to as 'territory'. As will be discussed later, the legal meaning of 'territory' includes other areas besides land. Disputes as to control over, or use of spaces may also refer to areas other than land, such as maritime areas, the airspace or the outer space. Conflicts may assume a variety of forms, the more extreme of them is war or, to use the precise current terminology, armed conflicts. Territorial change or control thereof has indeed been the source of most international conflicts in history. Conflicts may be the result of a divergence of views on the legal situation with regard to a given territory or the attempt by one of the parties to change the existing legal situation, hence the need to circumscribe clearly the scope of this Research Handbook. The following sections consequently propose definitional elements of the key notions: conflicts, territory and sovereignty.
A. Conflicts and DisputesIn general, the terms 'conflicts' and 'disputes' are used indistinctively. As a matter of fact, even if the two concepts are intertwined, they are not synonyms. In his Agenda for Peace, the former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, while discussing preventive diplomacy, mentioned as one of its meanings the action 'to prevent existing disputes to escalate into conflicts'. 1 Disputes may essentially refer to 1
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