ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of solution protocols with the act of splitting. This involves the legal separation of what might, at the outset, appear as indissoluble territory into respective and separate jurisdictions. The carving out of two (or more) jurisdictions from the same island, or set of islands, is a practical solution that is worth keeping in mind, especially when dealing with an archipelago as is the Diaoyu/Senkaku chain. St Martin is the world's smallest inhabited and divided island. Dividing a single and densely populated island like St Martin is one story; dividing a sprawling and lightly populated archipelago is quite another. The chapter moves from the Caribbean to the Pacific to consider the partition of the Ellice Islands (modern day Tuvalu) from the Gilbert Islands (modern day Kiribati). Full-scale negotiations over the border issue were resumed only after Gorbachev indicated, in 1986, the USSR's willingness to establish cordial and long-lasting peaceful relations with its neighbours.
