FOR more than a century, Peru’s collective psyche has been scarred by its defeat in the War of the Pacific of 1879-83 and Chile’s subsequent stalling in implementing the terms of a peace treaty. So when Peru’s government asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to redraw the maritime boundary between the two countries, many Peruvians saw a chance to heal wounded national pride.In its long-awaited ruling on January 27th the court duly awarded Peru control of some 50,000 sq km of ocean but confirmed Chile’s hold over inshore waters rich in fish. The decision was arbitrary but broadly fair—less than Peru had hoped for, but less bad than Chile had feared. It offers both countries a chance to move on from the past, but only after what is likely to be months of wrangling over how to implement the ruling.
The status quo in the Pacific clearly favoured Chile. Although the coast swings northwestward at the border with Peru, forming an elbow, the previous maritime boundary ran due west (see map). Peru claimed that the 1952 treaty from which this boundary derived was merely a fishing agreement. In 2008 it asked the ICJ to rule on a...
via The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1hRBN6z
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