The principle of just acquisition may
work for individuals. For States, it may solve one problem, what one has to do,
i.e. mix one’s labour. But leaves several other issues unresolved—e.g. a) who
did it first? b) how much each does individual own? (new problem, e.g. if
someone digs, can he claim that plot, the field or the whole island?), and c)
who inherits the property—the inhabitants or their ‘mother community’?
Any version of just acquisition will
have the same problems: people will never agree on the relevant facts and the
relevant test, and therefore all this principle would do is guarantee endless
conflict. So, the representatives in the original position would reject it.
Assuming there were negotiations between
non-regional (for example, France and Spain) and regional states (for example,
Comoro and Morocco) the representatives would have to decide how to allocate
the sovereignty over the disputed territories (as we have seen so far in the
blog, Ceuta, Melilla, and several islands and surrounding territories in land
and water).
Whether they have access to historical
records or not is irrelevant since they would only result in endless discussion
concerning historical entitlement that in most—if not all cases—is highly
difficult to be demonstrated. Governments and their representatives are aware
of this issue. More precisely, non-regional states maintain the very convenient
status quo to their interest by using
the historical argument since they know it will not bring any changes to the
current situation.
The advice here would be not to agree
to rely on a principle that guarantees endless conflict, and therefore, to
reject it as the principle to resolve these disputes. At the same time, by
rejecting the historical entitlement argument, it leaves all the agents with an
equal footing to continue the negotiations since none of them can argue a
better or more robust right over the claimed territory.
NOTE: based on Chapter 6, Núñez, Jorge Emilio. 2017.
Sovereignty Conflicts and International Law and Politics: A Distributive
Justice Issue. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
Jorge Emilio Núñez
Twitter: @London1701
02nd November 2018
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