ABSTRACT
Disputes over territory come in various forms and shapes and are usually entwined together with other issues of law and politics, sometimes making it near impossible to isolate the strictly legal issues that may be treated in resolving the dispute. The boundaries between nations (land, maritime and air) present many opportunities for international disputes. Frontier zones tend to be zones of blending and are of varying widths and shapes. Fences and physical barriers between nations are reminiscent of a more primordial past in the story of human societal evolution. It would take a very bold scholar to stand behind the proposition that the Berlin Conference achieved a meaningful delimitation of the African continent. Nevertheless the resulting treaty from the conference delimited spheres of influence between various powerful states, unfairly granting them rights over many African territories which became the de jure colonial and then post-colonial boundaries of the continent.
