ABSTRACT
Territorial sovereignty was described in the Island of Palmas Arbitration as being ‘the right to exercise therein [i.e. on the territory], to the exclusion of any other state, the functions of a sovereign’. Territorial sovereignty has two aspects:
• internal which concerns the authority exercised by a State within its borders over persons and situations/events that occur there. It also encompasses the right to dispose of the territory; and
• external, which entails that a State must respect the territorial integrity of other States, i.e. must not interfere in another State’s internal and external affairs and must ensure the safety of foreign nationals present within its territory. This obligation is embodied in the principle of nonintervention.
