Ghana takes sea border dispute with Togo to international arbitration

Ghana has officially informed Togo that it is moving their unresolved maritime boundary dispute to international arbitration.

In a statement issued on Friday, February 20, the Minister for Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, said Ghana will ask for a legal delimitation of the offshore boundary under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Government says the decision comes after eight years of back-and-forth talks with Togo without a final agreement. It added that arbitration is being pursued to avoid a build-up of incidents that have created tension between institutions in both countries, and to settle the matter through a clear, rules-based process while protecting the longstanding relationship between Accra and Lomé.

The move also revives a path Ghana has used before. In 2014, Ghana went to international adjudication over a similar offshore boundary disagreement with Côte d’Ivoire, a dispute that intensified after major oil discoveries. That case was handled under UNCLOS by a Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), and in September 2017 the tribunal delivered a binding decision that largely favoured Ghana and fixed the boundary using an equidistance line.