ABSTRACT

Since the Second World War, the international community has formally declared itself in favour of the stability of boundaries between states. The Charter of the United Nations set the scene in 1945 by recognising that the sovereignty of a properly constituted state is absolute and exclusive, and that states must respect the territorial integrity of one another. The principle of the inviolability of boundaries has been confirmed on a number of subsequent occasions. In 1964, member states of the Organisation of African Unity agreed to respect the borders that they had inherited from colonial times. In 1975 in the Helsinki Final Act, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe affirmed the same principle, while in 1991 the Commonwealth of Independent States (the majority of the states of the former Soviet Union) also agreed to accept their inherited boundaries. States in Latin America had set the trend in the nineteenth century when they became independent of Spain and Portugal, a principle known as Uti possidetis. These worthy declarations, alas, have not rid the world of boundary disputes. On the contrary, Africa, Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America have all witnessed a large number of boundary disputes, and some spectacular changes to the political map. The truth is that the world political map is changing all the time, and will continue to change in future.