What is a territorial dispute?
A dispute is a disagreement. A territorial dispute, in simple terms, is a disagreement about “who owns a territory.” In international relations, this means in principle there is a disagreement between at least two parties in relation to whom the sovereign is over a piece of land.
We regularly see on the news examples of territorial disputes. The most notorious are Jerusalem, Kashmir, Gibraltar, Catalonia, Falkland/Malvinas Islands. Yet, there are many more territorial disputes. The links below show 100+ current international territorial disputes. For up-to-date information about territorial disputes around the world refer to the CIA’s World Factbook. See also Brilliant Maps.
Let’s be more precise: Narrow and broad accounts
More precisely, territorial disputes may be defined and characterized in a narrow and in a broad sense. Narrowly, a territorial dispute is a disagreement between states about the sovereignty over territory—e.g. land or water.[1] More broadly, a territorial dispute refers to a disagreement between agents—e.g. individuals, communities and states—about the sovereignty over space[2]—i.e. land, water, space and cyberspace. Both, the narrow and the broad account, characterize territorial disputes as a conflict of interests.[3]
Territorial disputes encompass several pluralisms.[4] They include different agents—e.g. individuals, communities and states—that may play different roles in their interrelations—i.e. hosts, participants, attendees and viewers. Moreover, these agents and their interrelations may be influenced by different contexts—i.e. domestic, regional and international. Finally, territorial disputes can be comprehended in several ways—i.e. factually, normatively and axiologically—and comprise elements and features with various modes of existence—i.e. ideal, natural, cultural and metaphysical. Therein, main difference between the narrow and broad account with regard territorial disputes is related to the pluralisms—and consequent elements and features—that characterize the given case at hand.
A narrow account may consider, for example, a territorial dispute in a unidimensional form in respect to its normative realm and a particular kind of agent such as sovereign states. In that sense, “dispute” can be differentiated from “situation” and “conflict.” While a “situation” refers to chain of events and issues giving rise to not one but several disputes that are interrelated to each other—e.g. the situation in the Caribbean Sea, a “conflict” refers to a general state of hostility between states and other subjects of international law—e.g. the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict. This is a scenario which mostly involves use of force by states.
In public international law, for instance, a “dispute” has a specific meaning. Normally, the term covers disagreement between sovereign states with respect to issues such as determination of their legal rights, duties, obligations, interests, or interpretation of treaties and delineation of boundaries. Even if there is a “dispute” between states, at times, it may be difficult for states to agree on the fact that they have a dispute between them. In such cases, international courts or tribunals have to determine the existence of a dispute.[5]
NOTE:
This blog series introduces, explains and assesses issues pertaining territorial disputes in the Americas including law, politics, culture, history and religion. There will be new posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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[1] See Jorge E. Núñez, Cosmopolitanism, State Sovereignty, International Law and Politics: A Theory. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023), Chapter 7 and Jorge E. Núñez, Territorial Disputes and State Sovereignty: International Law and Politics (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020), Chapter 4.
[2] For different notions of space see Jorge E. Núñez, Cosmopolitanism, State Sovereignty, International Law and Politics: A Theory (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023), Chapter 6.
[3] For the notions of identity and conflict of interest the author follows Rawls. See Jorge E. Núñez, Territorial Disputes and State Sovereignty: International Law and Politics (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020), Chapter 4; and John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4.
[4] For the notion of pluralism of pluralisms see Jorge E. Núñez, Cosmopolitanism, State Sovereignty, International Law and Politics: A Theory (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023).
[5] See, for example, Greece v. UK (1924) (the Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions) where the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) adopted the definition of the term as follows: “a dispute is a disagreement on a point of law or fact, a conflict of legal views or of interests between two parties.”
