Chile and Bolivia find themselves before the International Court of Justice yet again, this time litigating about the most valuable resource in the Atacama Desert: Water. Bolivia started asserting exclusive ownership over the Silala watercourse towards the end of the last century provoking the Chilean application to the Court in mid-2016. Therein, Chile seeks the Court to establish the applicability of International Water Law to the Silala watercourse employing scientific and legal arguments. This article analyzes the States’ arguments and arrives at the conclusion that the Silala is an international watercourse as Chile explicitly and Bolivia tacitly agreed on this status.
Keywords:
International Water Law, Chile v Bolivia, Silala, descriptive and normative characteristics
Author Biography
Florian Kriener, University of Heidelberg
University of Heidelberg, Germany; Assistant at the Max-Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and the Max-Planck-Foundation for international Peace and Rule of Law
Kriener, F. (2017). Determinación de un curso de agua internacional: La disputa de Chile c. Bolivia concerniente al río Silala. Revista Tribuna Internacional, 6(12). https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-482X.2017.48016
