The Bay of Bengal Maritime Boundary Arbitration

In one line

India and Bangladesh could not agree a boundary in a bay whose shape cuts Bangladesh off from the sea, and a tribunal drew one, adjusting equidistance for the concavity.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: in the Bay of Bengal Maritime Boundary Arbitration, decided on 7 July 2014, an arbitral tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the Convention on the Law of the Sea delimited the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf within and beyond two hundred nautical miles between Bangladesh and India. It applied the equidistance and relevant circumstances method, held that the concavity of the coast of Bangladesh caused the provisional equidistance line to produce a cut-off effect amounting to a relevant circumstance, and adjusted the line accordingly, producing a grey area in which the seabed belongs to one State and the superjacent waters to the other.

Why the case arose

The geography is the case. The Bay of Bengal is markedly concave, and Bangladesh sits at the head of the concavity with India to the west and Myanmar to the east. As [Delimitation of Maritime Boundaries] explains, equidistance lines drawn from a recessing coast converge a short distance out and cut the State behind them off from the sea beyond. Bangladesh's position in the Bay is the textbook instance, and the North Sea Continental Shelf cases had identified the same problem for Germany forty-five years earlier.

Two neighbours, two proceedings. Bangladesh's boundary with Myanmar was decided by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on 14 March 2012. Its boundary with India came to an Annex VII tribunal.

The tribunal and the proceedings

Constituted under Annex VII to the Convention, with the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague as registry. The tribunal was Judge Rudiger Wolfrum as President, with Judge Jean-Pierre Cot, Judge Thomas A. Mensah, Dr Pemmaraju Sreenivasa Rao and Professor Ivan Shearer. The award is dated 7 July 2014.

What was decided

Facts. Bay of Bengal Maritime Boundary Arbitration (Bangladesh v. India), PCA Case No. 2010-16, award of 7 July 2014. Bangladesh and India had never agreed a maritime boundary. Bangladesh argued that the geography of the Bay made equidistance inappropriate and proposed an angle-bisector line; India argued for the equidistance and relevant circumstances method and a median line. Bangladesh also relied on the concavity of its coast as a special circumstance and on the instability of its deltaic coastline.

Held on jurisdiction and the land boundary. Unanimously, the tribunal had jurisdiction to adjudicate the case, to identify the land boundary terminus, and to delimit the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf within and beyond two hundred nautical miles in the areas where the parties' claims overlapped. It determined the terminus of the land boundary at 21 degrees 38 minutes 40.2 seconds North, 89 degrees 09 minutes 20.0 seconds East.