ICJ to begin hearing of Kenya-Somalia maritime case in September

[Deeq A.]

The hearing of the maritime dispute between Kenya and Somalia will start on September 9 and run through to September 13 at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, Netherlands.

The Court published a schedule for the hearing which will be streamed live.

The program, announced by the Court on Tuesday, states that there will be two parts of hearings – one on Monday and Wednesday, the other on Thursday and Friday, with each country being given two days to defend their cases.

Somalia will prosecute its case on the first day, September 9, through oral submissions between 10am and 1pm, then 3pm to 4.30pm Hague time.

Kenya will have the same time to respond on September 11.

The second round of oral submissions will be on Thursday, September 12, with Somalia getting the time between 3pm to 6pm to respond.

Kenya will get a similar opportunity to respond the next day, September 13.

Journalists intending to cover the proceedings from the venue must apply for online accreditation before September 2, 2019.

The schedule means the case will go on despite Kenya’s continued search for an out of court settlement.

Somalia sued Kenya at the ICJ, seeking to redraw the maritime boundary from the current eastwards flow from the land border south of Kiunga, to a diagonal flow. If the court agrees with Somalia, Kenya could lose up to 100,000km2 of sea thought to contain huge amounts of hydrocarbons.

But Nairobi has argued, both in court and outside of it, that the case should never have been filed because there were alternative means which had not been exhausted.

Nairobi also accused Somalia of continuing to market oil stocks to investors even though the area is still contested. It accused Mogadishu of using illegal maps that encroached on the Kenyan side.

Mogadishu denies encroaching on Kenyan land.

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