Source: http://www.worldcourts.com/icj/eng/decisions/2003.12.18_frontier_dispute.htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 07:22:39+00:00

Document:
Mr. Miguel Tosta Appel, Chairman of the Honduran National Section of the El Salvador-Honduras Demarcation Commission, as Counsel.
1. On 10 September 2002 the Republic of El Salvador (hereinafter "El Salvador") filed in the Registry of the Court an Application instituting proceedings dated the same day, whereby, citing Article 61 of the Statute and Articles 99 and 100 of the Rules of Court, it submitted a request to the Court for revision of the Judgment delivered on 11 September 1992 by the Chamber of the Court formed to deal with the case concerning the Land, Island and Maritime Frontier Dispute (El Salvador/Honduras: Nicaragua intervening) (I.C.J. Reports 1992, p. 351).
2. Pursuant to Article 40, paragraph 2, of the Statute, the Registrar communicated a certified copy of the Application to the Republic of Honduras (hereinafter "Honduras") on 10 September 2002. A copy of the Application was also communicated to the Republic of Nicaragua for information purposes, since that State had been authorized, pursuant to Article 62 of the Statute, to intervene in the original proceedings. In accordance with Article 40, paragraph 3, of the Statute, all States entitled to appear before the Court were notified of the Application.
3. In its Application, El Salvador, citing Article 100, paragraph 1, of the Rules of Court, requested the Court "To proceed to form the Chamber that will hear the application for revision of the Judgment, bearing in mind the terms that El Salvador and Honduras agreed upon in the Special Agreement of 24 May 1986."
4. The Parties, duly consulted by the President of the Court on 6 November 2002, expressed their wish for the formation of a new chamber of five members, of whom two would be judges ad hoc to be chosen by them pursuant to Article 31, paragraph 3, of the Statute. By a letter of 7 November 2002 the Agent of El Salvador informed the Court that his Government had chosen H.E. Mr. Felipe H. Paolillo to sit as judge ad hoc; and by a letter of 18 November 2002 the Agent of Honduras informed the Court that his Government had chosen Mr. Santiago Torres BernArdez to sit as judge ad hoc.
5. By an Order of 27 November 2002 the Court, acting pursuant to Article 26, paragraph 2, of the Statute and Article 17 of the Rules of Court, decided to accede to the request of the Parties that a special chamber be formed to deal with the case; it declared that, at an election held on 26 November 2002, [p 395] President Guillaume and Judges Rezek and Buergenthal had been elected to form a chamber to deal with the case, together with the above-named judges ad hoc, stating further that the said chamber as so composed had accordingly been duly constituted pursuant to that Order. In accordance with Article 18, paragraph 2, of the Rules of Court, Judge Guillaume, who held the office of President of the Court when the Chamber was formed, was to preside over the Chamber.
6. By the same Order, the Court, acting pursuant to Articles 92, paragraph 2, and 99, paragraph 2, of the Rules of Court, fixed 1 April 2003 as the time-limit for the filing of Written Observations by Honduras on the admissibility of the Application, and reserved the subsequent procedure for further decision.
7. On 1 April 2003, within the time-limit fixed, Honduras filed in the Registry its Written Observations on the admissibility of El Salvador's Application.
8. In a letter of 8 April 2003 the Agent of El Salvador, referring to the Written Observations of Honduras, contended that the latter had submitted new documents with corresponding arguments, and that these required a response from El Salvador, accompanied by the necessary documents, and to that end requested authorization for his Government to submit new documents. In a letter of 24 April 2003 the Co-Agent of Honduras opposed that request. Following a meeting held by the President of the Chamber with the Parties' Agents on 28 April 2003, the Chamber decided that the filing of additional written pleadings was not necessary in the circumstances, that the written proceedings were accordingly closed, and that, if El Salvador wished to submit new documents, its request would then be considered in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 56 of the Rules of Court. The Registrar advised the Parties of this decision by letters dated 8 May 2003.
9. By a letter of 23 June 2003 El Salvador sought authorization to produce new documents pursuant to Article 56 of the Rules of Court. Those documents, having been filed in the Registry that same day, were transmitted to Honduras in accordance with paragraph 1 of that Article. By a letter of 10 July 2003 Honduras informed the Chamber that it objected to the production of those documents. El Salvador and Honduras were authorized to submit further observations on the matter, which they did by letters of 17 and 24 July 2003 respectively. After examining the views thus expressed by the Parties, the Chamber decided, in accordance with Article 56, paragraph 2, of the Rules of Court, to authorize the production of only some of the documents submitted by El Salvador. The Chamber further noted that a new document attached by Honduras to its Observations of 10 July 2003 was admissible only if authorized pursuant to the same provision of the Rules, and decided not to authorize its production. By letters of 29 July 2003, the Deputy-Registrar informed the Parties of these decisions, advising them that, pursuant to Article 56, paragraph 3, Honduras was authorized to comment by not later than 19 August 2003 on the documents which the Chamber had authorized El Salvador to produce, and to submit documents in support of its comments. On 19 August 2003, within the time-limit thus fixed, Honduras filed its comments in the Registry together with four supporting documents.
10. Pursuant to Article 53, paragraph 2, of the Rules of Court, the Chamber, having ascertained the views of the Parties, decided to make accessible to the [p 396] public, with effect from the opening of the oral proceedings, copies of Honduras's Written Observations on the admissibility of El Salvador's Application and of the documents annexed to those Observations, together with all new documents subsequently produced by the Parties with the Chamber's authorization.
Mr. Gabriel Mauricio Gutierrez Castro.
the old course of the GoascorAn river for a distance of 17,300 meters as far as the place known as the Rompicion de los Amates situated at latitude 13 [degree] 26' 29" N and longitude 87 [degree] 43' 25" W, which is where the GoascorAn river changed its course.'."
'Starting at the old mouth of the GoascorAn River at the entry point known as the Estero de la Cutu, located at latitude 13 degrees 22 minutes 00 seconds north and longitude 87 degrees 41 minutes 25 seconds west, the border follows the old bed of the GoascorAn River for a distance of 17,300 metres up to the place known as Rompicion de Los Amates, located at latitude 13 degrees 26 minutes 29 seconds north and longitude 87 degrees 43 minutes 25 seconds west, which is where the GoascorAn River changed course.'."
"In view of the facts and arguments presented above, the Government of the Republic of Honduras requests the Chamber to declare the inadmissibility of the Application for Revision presented on 10 September 2002 by El Salvador."
15. By a Judgment of 11 September 1992, the Chamber of the Court formed to deal with the case concerning the Land, Island and Maritime Frontier Dispute (El Salvador/Honduras: Nicaragua intervening) decided the course of the land boundary between El Salvador and Honduras in six disputed sectors of that boundary. By the same Judgment the Chamber settled the dispute between the Parties over the legal status of various islands in the Gulf of Fonseca and the legal status of waters in the Gulf and outside it.
16. El Salvador has submitted an Application to the Court for revision of the 1992 Judgment in respect of the sixth sector of the land boundary, lying between Los Amates and the Gulf of Fonseca. During the original proceedings, it was the contention of Honduras that in that sector "the boundary . . . follows the present stream [of the River GoascorAn], flowing into the Gulf north-west of the Islas Ramaditas in the Bay of La Union". El Salvador however claimed that the boundary was defined by "a previous course followed by the river . . . and that this course, since abandoned by the stream, can be traced, and it reaches the Gulf at Estero La Cutu" (Judgment, para. 306). In the Judgment revision of which is [p 398] now sought, the Chamber unanimously upheld the submissions of Honduras (ibid., paras. 321, 322 and 430).
5. No application for revision may be made after the lapse often years from the date of the judgment."
18. Article 61 provides for revision proceedings to open with a judgment of the Court declaring the application admissible on the grounds contemplated by the Statute; Article 99 of the Rules of Court makes express provision for proceedings on the merits if, in its first judgment, the Court has declared the application admissible.
Thus the Statute and the Rules of Court foresee a "two-stage procedure". The first stage of the procedure for a request for revision of the Court's judgment should be "limited to the question of admissibility of that request" (Application for Revision and Interpretation of the Judgment of 24 February 1982 in the Case concerning the Continental Shelf (Tunisia/Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) (Tunisia v. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1985, p. 197, paras. 8 and 10; Application for Revision of the Judgment of 11 July 1996 in the Case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia), Preliminary Objections (Yugoslavia v. Bosnia and Herzegovina), Judgment, 3 February 2003, para. 15).
"Honduras implicitly acknowledged the admissibility of El Salvador's Application when, by letter dated 29 October 2002, it informed the distinguished President of the Court that, pursuant to Article 61, paragraph 3, of the Statute, it would ask that the Court require previous compliance with the 1992 Judgment as a condition precedent to the admissibility of the Application for revision."
In El Salvador's view, "The back step that Honduras took with its letter of 24 July 2003", by which it decided not to ask for prior compliance with the judgment, "does nothing to diminish [the] acknowledgment [of the admissibility of the Application], and instead serves to confirm it". The Chamber is consequently requested to "adjudge and decide accordingly".
22. The Chamber observes first that, in its letter of 29 October 2002, Honduras informed the President of the Court that it would "request that the Court make the admission of the proceedings in revision conditional on previous compliance with the judgment" and that accordingly it would "submit a formal petition" to that effect. However, Honduras never submitted that request and stated in its observations of 24 July 2003 (see paragraph 9 above) that it had "decided, on reflection, not to ask the Chamber to require prior compliance with the terms of the Judgment". Thus, Honduras's conduct cannot be construed as implying a tacit acceptance of the admissibility of El Salvador's Application for revision.
Further, paragraph 3 of Article 61 of the Statute and paragraph 5 of Article 99 of the Rules of Court afford the Court the possibility at any time to require previous compliance with the terms of the judgment whose revision is sought, before it admits proceedings in revision; accordingly, even if Honduras had submitted a request to the Court to require previous compliance without awaiting the Chamber's decision on the [p 400] admissibility of El Salvador's Application, the request would not have implied recognition of the admissibility of the Application.
Finally, the Chamber notes that, regardless of the parties' views on the admissibility of an application for revision, it is in any event for the Court, when seised of such an application, to ascertain whether the admissibility requirements laid down in Article 61 of the Statute have been met. Revision is not available simply by consent of the parties, but solely when the conditions of Article 61 are met.
23. In order properly to understand El Salvador's present contentions, it is necessary to recapitulate at the outset part of the reasoning in the 1992 Judgment in respect of the sixth sector of the land boundary.
That was claimed to be the rule under both Spanish colonial law and international law. Thus, according to El Salvador, the boundary between the two States should be established not along the present stream of the river, flowing into the Bay of La Union, but along the "previous course . . . since abandoned by the stream", probably during the seventeenth century, emptying into the Estero La Cutu (paras. 306 and 311).
24. After setting out this argument by El Salvador, the Chamber stated in its Judgment of 11 September 1992 that "No record of such an abrupt change of course having occurred has been brought to the Chamber's attention" (para. 308). It added: "were the Chamber satisfied that the river's course was earlier so radically different from its present one, then an avulsion might reasonably be inferred" (para. 308). The Chamber observed, however, that: "There is no scientific evidence that the previous course of the GoascorAn was such that it debouched in the Estero La Cutu" or in another neighbouring inlet (para. 309). It did not take a position on the consequences that any avulsion, occurring before or after 1821, would have had on provincial boundaries, or boundaries between States, under Spanish colonial law or international law.
The Chamber went on to find that "any claim by El Salvador that the boundary follows an old course of the river abandoned at some time [p 401] before 1821 must be rejected. It is a new claim and inconsistent with the previous history of the dispute." (Para. 312.) In this regard, the Chamber noted inter alia that on several occasions, including in particular during the Saco negotiations between the two States in 1880, El Salvador had adopted conduct excluding any "claim . . . that the 1821 boundary was not the 1821 course of the river, but an older course, preserved as provincial boundary by a provision of colonial law" (para. 312).
The Chamber then considered "the evidence made available to it concerning the course of the river GoascorAn in 1821" (para. 313). It examined in particular a "chart (described as a 'Carta Esferica') of the Gulf of Fonseca prepared by the captain and navigators of the brig or brigantine El Activo, who sailed in 1794, on the instructions of the Viceroy of Mexico, to survey the Gulf (para. 314). It noted that the mouth of the GoascorAn on that chart was "quite inconsistent with the old course of the river alleged by El Salvador, or, indeed, any course other than the present-day one" (para. 314). The Chamber concluded that "the report of the 1794 expedition and the 'Carta Esferica' leave little room for doubt that the river GoascorAn in 1821 was already flowing in its present-day course" (para. 316).
Finally, after having examined various other arguments by El Salvador which it is not necessary to repeat here, the Chamber "found that the boundary follows the present course of the GoascorAn" (para. 319) and defined the boundary line in the mouth of the river (paras. 320-322).
25. In its Application for revision, El Salvador, acting under Article 61 of the Statute, relies on facts which it considers to be new within the meaning of that Article; those facts relate, on the one hand, to the avulsion of the river GoascorAn and, on the other, to the "Carta Esferica" and the report of the 1794 El Activo expedition.
26. El Salvador first claims to possess scientific, technical and historical evidence showing, contrary to what it understands the decision of the Chamber to have been, that the GoascorAn did in the past change its bed, and that the change was abrupt, probably as a result of a cyclone in 1762.
In support of this contention El Salvador submits to the Chamber a report dated 5 August 2002 entitled Geologic, Hydrologic and Historic Aspects of the GoascorAn Delta -- A Basis for Boundary Determination. It also produces a study it conducted in 2002 "to check for the presence of vestiges of the GoascorAn's original riverbed and additional information about its hydrographic behaviour". Finally, it refers to various pub-[p 402]lications, including in particular Geografia de Honduras by Ulises Meza CAlix, published in 1916, and Monografia del Departamento de Valle, prepared under the direction of Bernardo Galindo y Galindo and published in 1934.
27. El Salvador argues that evidence can constitute "new facts" for purposes of Article 61 of the Statute. In this regard it relies on the travaux preparatoires of the provision of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, on which Article 61 is modelled, which are said to confirm that a document can be considered to be a "new fact". It also invokes an arbitral award handed down on 7 August and 25 September 1922 by the Franco-German Mixed Arbitral Tribunal in the Heim et Chamant c. Etat allemand case, which, in El Salvador's view, recognized that evidence can constitute "a fact".
El Salvador further contends that the evidence it is now offering establishes the existence of an old bed of the GoascorAn debouching in the Estero La Cutu, and the avulsion of the river in the mid-eighteenth century or that at the very least, it justifies regarding such an avulsion as plausible. These are said to be "new facts" for purposes of Article 61.
28. The facts thus set out are, according to El Salvador, decisive. It maintains that the considerations and conclusions of the 1992 Judgment are founded on the rejection of an avulsion which, in the Chamber's view, had not been proved: that avulsion has ceased to be a matter of conjecture -- it is an established fact which actually occurred. On the basis of Spanish colonial law, the provincial boundaries remained unchanged, notwithstanding the avulsion, until 1821. El Salvador concludes that, contrary to what the Chamber held in 1992, the boundary arising from the uti possidetis juris should accordingly follow those boundaries and not the new course of the GoascorAn.
29. El Salvador finally maintains that, given all the circumstances of the case, in particular the "bitter civil war [which] was raging in El Salvador" "for virtually the whole period between 1980 and the handing down of the Judgment on 11 September 1992", its ignorance of the various new facts which it now advances concerning the course of the Goascor An was not due to negligence.
In particular, it states that the scientific and technical studies it has produced could not have been carried out previously, given both the state of science and technology in 1992, and the political situation prevailing at the time in the sixth sector of the boundary and, generally, in El Salvador and the region. As for the publications mentioned above (see paragraph 26), El Salvador contends that it could not have "access to the documents in Honduras's National Archives and, despite all its efforts, could not locate them in the archives of other States to which it did have access".
30. El Salvador concludes from the foregoing that, as the various con-[p 403]ditions laid down by Article 61 of the Statute are satisfied, the Application for revision founded on the avulsion of the river GoascorAn is admissible.
31. Honduras, for its part, argues that with regard to the application of Article 61 of the Statute, it is "well-established case law that there is a distinction in kind between the facts alleged and the evidence relied upon to prove them and that only the discovery of the former opens a right to revision". It quotes in this connection the Advisory Opinion rendered on 4 September 1924 by the Permanent Court of International Justice concerning the question of the Monastery of Saint-Naoum. According to Honduras, a "fact" cannot "include evidentiary material in support of an argument, or an assertion, or an allegation". Accordingly, the evidence submitted by El Salvador cannot open a right to revision.
Honduras adds that El Salvador has not demonstrated the existence of a new fact discovered by El Salvador since 1992 "which establishes that the GoascorAn River previously ran in a former bed which debouched at Estero La Cutu or that a process of 'avulsion' occurred, or that it occurred on a particular date". In reality, El Salvador is seeking "a new interpretation of previously known facts" and asking the Chamber for a "genuine reversal" of the 1992 Judgment.
32. Honduras further maintains that the facts relied on by El Salvador, even if assumed to be new and established, are not of such a nature as to be decisive factors in respect of the 1992 Judgment. According to Honduras, "the material presented by El Salvador on that subject is irrelevant to the operative factual determination" made at that time by the Chamber. That decision is alleged to have been founded solely on the finding of fact that "from 1880, during the Saco negotiations, until 1972 El Salvador had treated the boundary as being based on the 1821 course of the river". The Chamber is said to have acted on that basis alone when in paragraph 312 of its Judgment it rejected El Salvador's claim "that the boundary follows an old course of the river abandoned at some time before 1821", considering it to be "a new claim and inconsistent with the previous history of the dispute". Thus, according to Honduras, it does not matter whether or not there was avulsion: avulsion is irrelevant to the ratio decidendi of the Chamber.
33. Honduras argues lastly that El Salvador's ignorance in 1992 of the facts on which it is relying in the present proceedings in support of its theory of avulsion was due to negligence. El Salvador has "never proved that it exhausted -- or even initiated -- means that would have given it diligent knowledge of the facts that it is alleging today". In Honduras's view, El Salvador could have had the scientific and technical studies and historical research which it is now relying on carried out before 1992.
35. Finally, the Parties raise the question whether the Application for revision was properly made within the six-month time-limit stipulated in paragraph 4 of Article 61 of the Statute. They do acknowledge, however, that the Application was submitted within the ten-year time-limit provided for in paragraph 5 of that Article, specifically, one day before the expiry of that time-limit. Honduras maintains nevertheless that, by proceeding in this fashion, the Applicant showed procedural bad faith. That is denied by El Salvador.
36. Turning to consideration of El Salvador's submissions concerning the avulsion of the GoascorAn, the Chamber recalls that an application for revision is admissible only if each of the conditions laid down in Article 61 is satisfied, and that if any one of them is not met, the application must be dismissed; in the present case, the Chamber will begin by ascertaining whether the alleged facts, supposing them to be new facts, are of such a nature as to be decisive factors in respect of the 1992 Judgment.
37. In this regard, it is appropriate first to recall the considerations of principle on which the Chamber hearing the original case relied for its ruling on the disputes between the two States in six sectors of their land boundary.
Applying these principles to the first sector of the land boundary, the Chamber considered that in this sector "The situation was susceptible of modification by acquiescence in the lengthy intervening period" since the early nineteenth century. It added that, whatever may have been the colonial administrative boundaries, "the conduct of Honduras from 1881 until 1972 may be regarded as amounting to such acquiescence" to a part of the boundary claimed by El Salvador in this sector (para. 80).
"that during the colonial period a river called the GoascorAn constituted the boundary between two administrative divisions of the Captaincy-General of Guatemala: the province of San Miguel and the Alcaldia Mayor de Minas of Tegucigalpa" (para. 307).
The Parties were in agreement that El Salvador had succeeded in 1821 to the territory of the Province of San Miguel. On the other hand, they disagreed as to whether or not the Alcaldia Mayor of Tegucigalpa had passed to Honduras. The Chamber decided that point in favour of Honduras (ibid.).
At the conclusion of its consideration of El Salvador's line of argument [p 406] as to the avulsion of the GoascorAn, the Chamber did not take any position on the existence of an earlier course of the GoascorAn which might have debouched into the Estero La Cutu, or on any avulsion of the river, nor a fortiori, on the date of any such avulsion or its legal consequences. It confined itself to defining the framework in which it could possibly have taken a position on these various points.
The Chamber then noted: "A specific assertion that the boundary should follow an abandoned course of the river GoascorAn was first made during the Antigua negotiations in 1972" (para. 312). It also quoted an excerpt from the record of the negotiations between the two States at Saco in 1880, stating that the two delegates had agreed "to recognize" the river GoascorAn "as the frontier between the two Republics, from its mouth in the Gulf of Fonseca, Bay of La Union, upstream in a north-easterly direction . . ." (ibid.). The Chamber observed that to interpret "the words 'River GoascorAn' [in the text] as meaning a Spanish colonial boundary which in 1821 followed a long-abandoned course of the river, is out of the question" (ibid.). It added that similar considerations applied to the circumstances of further negotiations in 1884 (para. 317).
Having on these grounds arrived at the conclusion that the boundary in 1821 followed the course of the GoascorAn at that date, the Chamber turned to consideration of the evidence submitted to it in respect of that course (paras. 313 et seq.), evidence which will be examined in due course (see paragraph 50 below).
40. It is apparent from this discussion that, while the Chamber in 1992 rejected El Salvador's claims that the 1821 boundary did not follow the course of the river at that date, it did so on the basis of that State's conduct during the nineteenth century. In other words, applying the general rule which it had enunciated in paragraph 67 of the Judgment, the Chamber proceeded, in paragraph 312, concerning the sixth sector of the land boundary, by employing reasoning analogous to that which it had adopted in paragraph 80 in respect of the first sector. In the sixth sector, this reasoning led the Chamber to uphold the submissions of Honduras, while in the first sector it had proved favourable to El Salvador's position.
by El Salvador are not "decisive factors" in respect of the Judgment which it seeks to have revised. In light of the 1992 Judgment, the Chamber cannot but reach such a conclusion, independently of the positions taken by the Parties on this point in the course of the present proceedings.
41. In support of its Application for revision, El Salvador relies on a second "new fact", that is, the discovery in the Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago of a further copy of the "Carta Esferica" and of a further copy of the report of the expedition of the El Activo, thereby supplementing the copies from the Madrid Naval Museum to which the Chamber made reference in paragraphs 314 and 316 of its Judgment (see paragraph 24 above).
El Salvador states that in 1992, the Chamber had before it only copies of the documents that had been obtained from Madrid, and been produced by Honduras. It contends that it was on the basis of those copies that the Chamber decided the "point at which the GoascorAn emptied into the Gulf" and the course of the boundary.
"The fact that there are several versions of the 'Carta Esferica' and the Report of the Gulf of Fonseca from the El Activo expedition, that there are differences among them and the anachronisms they share, compromises the evidentiary value that the Chamber attached to the documents that Honduras presented, essential in the Judgment [of 1992]."
Further, the evidentiary value is claimed to be all the more doubtful in that the Madrid documents enjoyed no official status and have not been certified to be originals. Accordingly, maintains El Salvador, there exists "a second new fact, whose implications for the Judgment have to be considered once the application for revision is admitted".
42. El Salvador adds that "the discovery of hitherto unknown documents is a typical example of the type of fact which lays a case open to revision . . . either because they themselves constitute the factum or because they are the source of knowledge of them". It further states that "evidence which rebuts a fact established by a judgment of which revision is sought undoubtedly constitutes a fact for purposes of Article 61 of the Statute".
El Salvador asserts that in the present case the fact in question pre-[p 408]dated the 1992 Judgment but was not "known at the time the Judgment was given". Thus, it is a "new fact" for purposes of Article 61. It is said to be decisive because its discovery has highlighted "the insubstantiality of the Madrid Naval Museum documents" from which the Chamber inferred "such significant" geographical "consequences".
43. Lastly, El Salvador states that the Ayer Collection is "not an indispensable reference source" and that the El Activo expedition was not a well-known expedition. It refers in more general terms to the "bitter civil war [which] was raging in El Salvador" "for virtually the whole period between 1980 and the handing down of the Judgment on 11 September 1992". Accordingly, it argues, "El Salvador's ignorance until 2002 of the existence of copies of the El Activo documents in collections situated in out-of-the-way places cannot be characterized as 'negligent'".
44. El Salvador concludes from the foregoing that, as the various conditions laid down by Article 61 of the Statute are satisfied, the Application for revision founded on the discovery of the new chart and new report is admissible.
45. For its part, Honduras denies that the production of the documents found in Chicago can be characterized as a new fact. This is simply "another copy of one and the same document already submitted by Honduras during the written stage of the case decided in 1992, and already evaluated by the Chamber in its Judgment". Honduras adds that it "never sought to argue the point whether the spherical chart was an original document (it always spoke of copies) or an official document". But it contends that there are no discrepancies between the three copies of the chart, merely "insignificant differences". Honduras maintains that those differences in no way contradict the content of the logbook. Finally, it notes that all three charts place the mouth of the river GoascorAn in its present-day position, a finding on which the 1992 Judgment was based and which in any event remains valid.
46. Honduras further states that the new documents produced by El Salvador were part of a prestigious public collection and have been included in the Newberry Library catalogue at least since 1927. It concludes from this that El Salvador could easily have learned of those documents, and that it breached its duty of diligence in failing to seek them out or produce them before 1992. According to Honduras, no excuse for this failure can be found in the internal conflict prevailing in El Salvador at the time, as that conflict in no way prevented the conduct of research outside the national territory.
47. Honduras concludes from the foregoing that, as the various conditions laid down by Article 61 of the Statute are not satisfied, the Application for revision founded on the discovery of the new chart and the new report is not admissible.
48. Finally, as regards the conditions laid down in paragraphs 4 and 5 of Article 61 of the Statute, the Parties put forward arguments similar to [p 409] those they made in respect of the avulsion of the Goascoran (see paragraph 35 above).
49. The Chamber will proceed, as it did in respect of the avulsion (see paragraph 36 above), to determine first whether the alleged facts concerning the "Carta Esferica" and the report of the El Activo expedition are of such a nature as to be decisive factors in respect of the 1992 Judgment.
The Chamber then analysed the report of the expedition and observed that it also places "the mouth of the river Goascoran at its present-day position" (ibid.).
The Chamber concluded from the foregoing "that the report of the 1794 expedition and the 'Carta Esferica' leave little room for doubt that the river Goascoran in 1821 was already flowing in its present-day course" (para. 316).
51. The Judgment rendered by the Chamber in 1992 is thus based upon certain information conveyed by the "Carta Esferica" and the [p 410] report of the El Activo expedition, in the versions held in Madrid. It should therefore be determined whether the Chamber might have reached different conclusions in 1992 had it also had before it the versions of those documents from Chicago.
52. The Chamber observes in this connection, that the two copies of the "Carta Esferica" held in Madrid and the copy from Chicago differ only as to certain details, such as for example, the placing of titles, the legends, and the handwriting. These differences reflect the conditions under which documents of this type were prepared in the late eighteenth century; they afford no basis for questioning the reliability of the charts that were produced to the Chamber in 1992.
53. The Chamber notes further that the Estero La Cutu and the mouth of the Rio GoascorAn are shown on the copy from Chicago, just as on the copies from Madrid, at their present-day location. The new chart produced by El Salvador thus does not overturn the conclusions arrived at by the Chamber in 1992; it bears them out.
54. As for the new version of the report of the El Activo expedition found in Chicago, it differs from the Madrid version only in terms of certain details, such as the opening and closing indications, spelling, and placing of accents. The body of the text is the same, in particular in the identification of the mouth of the GoascorAn. Here again, the new document produced by El Salvador bears out the conclusions reached by the Chamber in 1992.
55. The Chamber concludes from the foregoing that the new facts alleged by El Salvador in respect of the "Carta Esferica" and the report of the El Activo expedition are not "decisive factors" in respect of the Judgment whose revision it seeks.
"other evidences and proofs exist that, while not a new fact, were not taken up in the proceedings and are useful, even essential, whether to supplement and confirm the new facts or to better understand them".
It cites the great eruption of Cosiguina volcano and the appearance of the Farallones del Cosiguina, the Saco negotiations between 1880 and 1884, and the characteristics of the lower reaches of the river Goascoran.
57. Honduras responds that El Salvador, by submitting for the Chamber's consideration "evidence additional to the alleged new facts", is acting "as though the Court had to ignore its previous reasoning, on the [p 411] pretext that it is in the light of the context that the existence or non-existence of the alleged new facts falls to be assessed". In the view of Honduras, this approach would be tantamount to expanding "the restrictive list of elements in Article 61, paragraph 1, of the Court's Statute to unheard-of lengths, calculated to turn revision into a habitual method of appeal and to undermine the authority of res judicata".
"the discovery of some fact of such a nature as to be a decisive factor, which fact was, when the judgment was given, unknown to the Court and also to the party claiming revision, always provided that such ignorance was not due to negligence".
Thus, the Chamber cannot find admissible an Application for revision on the basis of facts which El Salvador itself does not allege to be new facts within the meaning of Article 61.
59. Given the conclusions to which it has come in paragraphs 40, 55 and 58 above, it is not necessary for the Chamber to ascertain whether the other conditions laid down in Article 61 of the Statute are satisfied in the present case.
Finds that the Application submitted by the Republic of El Salvador for revision, under Article 61 of the Statute of the Court, of the Judgment given on 11 September 1992, by the Chamber of the Court formed to deal with the case concerning the Land, Island and Maritime Frontier Dispute (El Salvador/Honduras: Nicaragua intervening), is inadmissible.
AGAINST: Judge ad hoc Paolillo.
Done in French and in English, the French text being authoritative, at the Peace Palace, The Hague, this eighteenth day of December, two [p 412] thousand and three, in three copies, one of which will be placed in the archives of the Court and the others transmitted to the Government of the Republic of El Salvador and to the Government of the Republic of Honduras, respectively.
Judge ad hoc PAOLILLO appends a dissenting opinion to the Judgment of the Chamber.
Need for the Court to verify compliance with the conditions of admissibility laid down by Article 61 of the Statute; no role played by the Parties' views on the matter � Disagreement as to the main ground for rejection by the Chamber in the original proceedings on El Salvador's claims in respect of the sixth sector of the land boundary � True ratio decidendi of the 1992 Judgment in respect of the sixth sector of the boundary � Belated presentation by Honduras of its argument in this regard� Implicit acknowledgment by the Chamber that documentary evidence may constitute "facts" within the meaning of Article 61 of the Statute � New facts alleged by El Salvador largely satisfying the conditions laid down by Article 61 of the Statute � Decisive nature of evidence demonstrating the fact of avulsion � Doubts as to the reliability of the copies of the "Carta Esférica" and the report of the brigantine El Activo on which the Chamber based its 1992 decision regarding the sixth sector of the land boundary � No negligence on the part of El Salvador in presenting the new evidence.
1. I regret that the Chamber has missed the opportunity to declare admissible, for the first time in the Court's history, an application for revision which, to my mind, satisfied all the conditions laid down by Article 61 of the Statute of the Court. My disagreement with the majority of the Chamber is based on a difference of opinion as to the reasoning which led the Chamber hearing the original proceedings in 1992 to reject El Salvador's claims regarding the course of the land boundary between its territory and that of Honduras in the sixth sector. I cannot share the view of a majority of the Chamber's Members on what constituted the ratio decidendi of the decision rendered by the Chamber in 1992 in respect of that sector.
3. Viewed in the general context of the 1992 Judgment, this statement, which follows the detailed reasoning contained in paragraphs 308, 309 and 310 concerning evidence of the phenomenon of avulsion as alleged by El Salvador, seems to me to be an ancillary argument in relation to the main ground invoked by the Chamber in 1992 for its rejection of El Salvador's claims. This main ground, in my view, was that El Salvador had been unable to demonstrate that, on a specific date in the seventeenth century, the river Goaseoran had suddenly changed its course. It is this view of the ratio decidendi of the 1992 Judgment in respect of the sixth sector of the land boundary � a view that conflicts with that of a majority of Members of the present Chamber � which prompts me to draw an equally different conclusion regarding the admissibility of El Salvador's Application for revision.
4. I fully agree with the Chamber's statement in paragraph 22 of the present Judgment that "it is in any event for the Court, when seised of.. . an application [for revision], to ascertain whether the admissibility requirements laid down in Article 61 of the Statute have been met", regardless of the parties' views on the matter. In ascertaining whether these conditions have been satisfied, the Chamber's assessment will necessarily depend on the terms of the Judgment whose revision is sought and the Chamber must act in conformity with the findings in that Judgment. This is particularly important for purposes of ascertaining whether the new facts presented by the party seeking revision are "of such a nature as to be a decisive factor". That phrase has to be construed as meaning that, if the facts had been known previously, the Chamber would have taken a different decision. The new facts must, as noted by the present Chamber, be "'decisive factors' in respect of the Judgment which [the Applicant] seeks to have revised" (paras. 40 and 55), that is to say in relation to the ground that led the Chamber to take its decision in the original proceedings. Hence, the trickiest part of the process of considering an application for revision of a judgment consists in correctly identifying the real ratio decidendi of the judgment. In the case before us, the Chamber identified as ratio decidendi of the 1992 Judgment an observation by the Chamber, to my mind of secondary importance, related to the previous history of the dispute but not to its object or to the rights claimed by the Parties.
6. This was the issue that the Chamber had to resolve with respect to the sixth sector of the land boundary and which it addressed in the paragraphs of the Judgment dealing with that sector. In its description of the dispute, the Chamber made no reference to the incompatibility of El Sal-vador's claim with the previous history of the dispute.
"No record of such an abrupt change of course having occurred has been brought to the Chamber's attention, but were the Chamber satisfied that the river's course was earlier so radically different from its present one, then an avulsion might reasonably be inferred."
In the latter, it indicated that "[ijhere is no scientific evidence that the previous course of the Goascorán was such that it debouched in the Estero La Cutu . . .".
9. All these passages show that in 1992 the Chamber's reasoning focused on what constituted the crucial � and sole � point of dispute between the Parties with respect to the sixth sector, namely what was the course of the Goascoran which, by application of the uti possidetis juris, defined the boundary in the sixth sector. As El Salvador was unable to prove its allegation in the original proceedings, the Chamber rejected its claim.
10. It was only in paragraph 312 of the Judgment, after a relatively detailed analysis of the extent to which El Salvador had substantiated the fact of the avulsion, that the Chamber described El Salvador's claim as "new . . . and inconsistent with the previous history of the dispute". This brief, isolated and indeed ambiguous statement (what is meant by "inconsistent with the previous history of the dispute"?) seems to have been inserted after the Chamber's discussion of the evidence of El Salvador's allegations as an additional or supplementary line of argument rather than a decisive finding in the case.
"[e]ven if avulsion were now proved, and even if its legal consequences were those inferred by El Salvador, findings to that effect would provide no basis for calling into question the decision taken by the Chamber in 1992 on wholly different grounds".
11. As I see it, the Chamber, in so stating, overlooks what was said in paragraphs 308 and 309 of the 1992 Judgment, which suggest, on the contrary, that if El Salvador had provided the Chamber during the original proceedings with satisfactory evidence of the fact that the Goascoran had suddenly changed course by avulsion, the Chamber's decision regarding the sixth sector of the boundary would have been different (see paragraph 17 below).
12. If the ground for the Chamber's dismissal of El Salvador's claims in 1992 was that the claim concerning the sixth sector was new and "inconsistent with the previous history of the dispute", one may well ask (to cite the language of paragraph 38 of the present Judgment) why it proceeded to "consideration as a matter of law" of that State's proposition concerning the avulsion of the Goascoran, The fact is that, having considered El Salvador's claim and the evidence adduced to substantiate it, the Chamber concluded that no record of a sudden change in the course of the river had been brought to its attention (1992 Judgment, [p 417] para. 308) and that there was no scientific evidence that the previous course of the Goascoran was such that it debouched into the Estero La Cutii (1992 Judgment, para. 309). The Chamber could certainly have spared itself the trouble of assessing the weight of the evidence presented if the grounds on which it then rejected El Salvador's claim were its newness and its inconsistency with the previous history of the dispute.
13. I therefore find little justification for today's assertion that in 1992 "the Chamber did not take any position on the existence of an earlier course of the Goascoran which might have debouched into the Estero La Cutii, or on any avulsion of the river" (para. 38). Inasmuch as it examined El Salvador's allegations concerning the avulsion of the Goascoran and the existence of an old riverbed, and concluded that those allegations had not been proved, the Chamber unquestionably did not confine itself in 1992 "to defining the framework in which it could possibly have taken a position on these various points" (ibid). Granted that in 1992 the Chamber "did not take a position on the consequences that any avulsion, occurring before or after 1821, would have had on provincial boundaries, or boundaries between States, under Spanish colonial law or interna-tional law" (para. 24). But what purpose would it have served for the Chamber to take a position on the consequences of an avulsion after finding that no such avulsion had been proved?
14. Relying solely on paragraph 312 of the 1992 Judgment, the present Chamber concludes that El Salvador's claims that the 1821 boundary defined by application of the uti possidetis juris principle did not follow the course of the river at that date were rejected by the Chamber in 1992 on the basis of "that State's conduct during the nineteenth century" (para. 40). In so doing, it appears to attach no importance to the points made in the preceding paragraphs, especially paragraphs 308 and 309, which, to my mind, contain the real grounds for the Chamber's rejection of El Salvador's claims in the sixth sector.
"applying the general rule which it had enunciated in paragraph 67 of the Judgment, the Chamber proceeded, in paragraph 312, concerning the sixth sector of the land boundary, by employing reasoning analogous to that which it had adopted in paragraph 80 in respect of the first sector" (para. 40).
16. Yet I see nothing in paragraph 312 of the 1992 Judgment, or in any other paragraph thereof, from which it might be inferred that the Chamber wished to apply to the sixth sector of the boundary the same criterion as it had applied to the first sector. In my opinion, the present Chamber is attributing to the 1992 Chamber more than it wished to say in paragraph 312 of its decision. All the Chamber did in that passage was to draw attention to certain aspects of the previous history of the boundary dispute in support of the conclusions it had reached in the preceding paragraphs, namely that El Salvador had not substantiated its claims concerning the land boundary in the sixth sector.
17. In 1992 the Chamber did not even imply that evidence of an avulsion was irrelevant by virtue of the fact that El Salvador, in the sixth sector of the boundary, had accepted a change in the position resulting from the application of uti possidetis juris. On the contrary, the Chamber pro-ceeded to consider the claims of the two Parties and concluded that El Salvador had been unable to substantiate its argument. Moreover, it added that if it had been satisfied that the river's course was earlier so radically different from its present one, "then an avulsion might reasonably be inferred" (1992 Judgment, para. 308). The Chamber thus implied that this would have led it to draw different legal conclusions from those reached in its decision, for its function would not normally involve simply determining whether the phenomenon of avulsion had in fact occurred: its role is not to take a position on the occurrence of hydro-logical phenomena without drawing legal inferences from them.
18. Moreover, even if analogies may be drawn between the uti possidetis juris positions in respect of the first and sixth sectors, and even if it may be inferred in principle from these analogies that the same criterion should be applied in the both cases, it is clear, in my view, that the Chamber did not adopt that approach. First, because if, as assumed in the present Judgment, the Chamber had in 1992 applied the same criterion to the sixth sector as it had applied to the first, it would have done so expressly, as in paragraph 80 of its decision. Furthermore, acknowledgment of a modification of the uti possidetis juris position or acquiescence in such a modification is far more difficult to infer in the case of the sixth sector than in that of the first. It should be borne in mind in this regard that, as the Chamber stated in 1992 in paragraph 67 of its Judgment, such a modification must be based on "sufficient evidence to show that the parties have in effect clearly accepted a variation, or at least an interpretation, of the uti possidetis juris position" (emphasis added).
19. I have not found such evidence in respect of the application of the uti possidetis juris principle to the sixth sector. The lack of an express reference to the old course of the Goascoran during the negotiations that took place prior to 1972 does not constitute sufficient evidence to show [p 419] that El Salvador "clearly accepted" a variation of the uti possidetis juris position. Construing this lack of a reference as a waiver by El Salvador of its claim to have the boundary follow the old riverbed by application of the uti possidetis juris principle would be giving undue weight to, and drawing unduly far-reaching legal consequences from, the silence of the Parties. This silence cannot imply "clear acceptance" of a modification of the application of the principle in question.
20. Even if one infers from El Salvador's conduct during the Saco negotiations that it accepted settlement formulas establishing the present course of the Goascoran as the boundary between the territories of the two countries, it does not follow that El Salvador thus definitively waived its claim to base the boundary line on the course of the old riverbed. There is no evidence to demonstrate beyond doubt that El Salvador's intention was to waive its right to application of the uti possidetis juris without variation.
21. During the Saco negotiations, the two States tried to find apolitical solution to their boundary dispute, and it was natural, indeed necessary, in the circumstances in which the negotiations took place, to make concessions by waiving rights at the political level that they could have asserted at the judicial level. Moreover, the Saco negotiations "were unsuccessful" (Written Observations of Honduras, para. 3.54) and the conference records say nothing about the precise location of the point in the Bay of La Union into which the Goascoran flows, a question on which the Parties have never agreed.
22. The contention that the "newness" of El Salvador's claim cannot be the ratio decidendi of the Chamber's 1992 decision is borne out by the fact that Honduras's claim in respect of the boundary line to the northwest of the Is las Ramaditas was also first asserted during the Antigua negotiations of 1972, In any case, are these negotiations not part of the "previous history of the dispute"? In what way is El Salvador's claim "inconsistent" with the previous history of the dispute? In the light of these negotiations, can El Salvador's claim be described in 1992 or in 2003 as a "new claim"?
23. Honduras's approach to the question of revision was clearly based on the same understanding of the ratio decidendi of the 1992 Judgment as is set forth in this opinion, at least prior to the final public sitting of the Chamber on 12 September 2003. Honduras's opposition to El Salvador's Application for revision was based on the premise that the Chamber had rejected El Salvador's claim on the ground that that State had not provided sufficient evidence of the avulsion. It follows that, in the view of Honduras, the ratio decidendi of the decision was unrelated to the historical pertinence of the claim. This premise represents the substance of Honduras's Written Observations and also of the statements of its Agents and counsel, who occasionally express it in explicit terms (see, for example, the statements by the Agent, Mr. Lopez Contreras, [p 420] on 9 September (C6/CR 2003/3, p. 12, para. 1.20) and by a counsel, Mr. Jiménez Piernas, on the same day (C6/CR 2003/3, p. 35, para. 15)).
"in general a fact can be of such a nature as to be a decisive factor for the purposes of an application for revision of a final, binding judgment bearing the sacrosanct authority oí res judicata only if that fact is the discovery of a title, or of additional colonial effectivités in cases where title is either non-existent or indeterminate" (Written Observations, para. 3.9).
It added that "[i]t must in all events be kept in mind that the dispute decided by the Judgment of 11 September 1992 very specifically concerns the uti possidetis of 1821" (ibid., para. 3.10) and that "[t]he [new] fact must be important per se . . . in proving the uti possidetis" (ibid., para. 3,11). Honduras did not explicitly address the issue of the "inconsistency" of El Salvador's claim with the previous history of the dispute.
25. It was only at a late stage, at the last public sitting on 12 September 2003 during the second round of oral argument (El Salvador, the applicant State, thus had no opportunity to respond), that Honduras asserted that the Chamber's brief reasoning in paragraph 312 of the 1992 Judgment concerning the historical pertinence of El Salvador's claim constituted the ratio decidendi of the decision or, in other words, that it was on the basis of that reasoning that the Chamber had defined the boundary of the sixth sector as following the present course of the Goascorán. It was only at this stage in its oral argument that Honduras alleged for the first time that "the material presented by El Salvador to that subject is irrelevant to the operative factual determination" (Mr. Philippe Sands, C6/CR 2003/5, pp. 9-10, para, 5), To paraphrase the Chamber's words in 1992, I would say that Honduras's last-minute line of argument is incontestably "new and inconsistent with the previous history" of the case.
26. This unexpected last-minute change of strategy by Honduras had the unfortunate consequence of preventing El Salvador from expressing its opinion on the questions thus raised.
27. The late presentation of a new argument would not appear, under the circumstances, to have been consistent with sound procedural practice or with the principle of equality of the Parties.
28. The new facts on which El Salvador based its Application for revision consist of a series of items of documentary evidence (scientific [p 421] studies, technical reports, cartographic material, publications) discovered or produced after 1992 which, according to El Salvador, were unknown both to itself and to the Chamber and are alleged to be of such a nature as to be a decisive factor.
29. The Chamber did not ask itself whether or not this documentary evidence could be regarded as "new facts" within the meaning of Article 61 of the Statute of the Court. It concluded that it failed to satisfy one of the conditions laid down by that Article (being of such a nature as to be a decisive factor), which is tantamount to an implicit acknowledgment of its status as "new facts". The Chamber thus confirms that the production of such documents may substantiate an application for revision provided that they meet the criteria laid down by Article 61 of the Statute.
FN1See Daniel Bardonnet, "De l'équivoque des categories juridiques: la révision des sentences arbitrales pour 'erreur de fait' ou "fait nouveau' dans la pratique latino-américaine", in Liber Amkorum "In Memoriam" of Judge José Maria Rttda, C. A. Armas Barea et ai. (eds.), p. 199; Simpson and Fox, International Arbitration � Law and Practice, 1959, p. 245.
"[i]f this Application for revision were to be held admissible, the unfortunate precedent which this would create would come to be seen in future as an encouragement to any State dissatisfied with a judgment of the Court to apply for its revision , . ." (Written Observations, para. 1.19)FN2.
FN2Time has shown, however, that this fear is unfounded. No application for revision has been filed under the Hague Conventions, none was filed before the Permanent Court of International Justice, and this Court; has dealt with only three applications for revision (including that filed by El Salvador) during the 60 years of its existence and has declared all three inadmissible.
31. Honduras also put forward a narrow interpretation of the terms of Article 61 of the Statute of the Court. It argued that "the objective reality of a fact must be distinguished from the interpretation which . . . [one] seeks to place upon it, and from inferences or other new 'intellectual constructs' " (ibid,, para. 2.17). According to Honduras, there is "a distinction in kind between the facts alleged and the evidence relied upon to prove them, and only the discovery of the former opens a right to [p 422] revision" (Written Observations, para. 2.20). Honduras claimed to be relying on "well-established case law", although it merely cited the Advisory Opinion of the Permanent Court of International Justice on the delimitation of the boundary between Serbia and Albania at the Monastery of Saint Naoum, which states that "fresh documents do not in themselves amount to fresh facts"FN3.
FN3Advisory Opinion, 1924, P.C.!.J., Serins B, No. 9, p. 22.
32. While it is true that an application for revision is by its very nature and object exceptional and hence that "the conditions in which it is exercised are . . . necessarily limited"4 and that it is admissible only when all the � very strict � conditions of Article 61 of the Statute are satisfied, the restrictive nature of the conditions governing its exercise cannot be extended to the manner in which the language of those conditions is interpreted. To say that the admissibility of an application for revision is subject to strict conditions is one thing; to argue that the provisions governing the use of such an application must therefore be narrowly interpreted and applied is quite a different matter. There is no justification for applying a narrow interpretative criterion to the terms of Article 61 of the Statute of the Court, by virtue of which documents are not to be regarded as "facts" within the meaning of Article 61. The Article should be interpreted in accordance with general rules of interpretation, which require that terms should be given their ordinary meaning. And there can be no doubt whatsoever that the ordinary meaning of the term "facts" includes documents5.
FN4 Michel Dubisson, La Cour internationale de Just ice, 1964, p. 250.
FN5 What is true, real ; what really exists (Larousse) ; what constitutes the substance of something known (Laiande. Vocabulaire technique el critique de la philosophie) [translations by the Registry]. See also Jean Salmon, "Le fait dans l'application du droit international". Recueil des cours de l'Académie de droit international de La Haye (RCADI), Vol. 175 (1982), p. 273.
33. The discussions that preceded the adoption of Article 59 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice (which subsequently became Article 61 of the Statute of this Court) show that, in the minds of the drafters of the Article, documents constituted "facts"FN6. This opinion also prevails in the literatureFN7 and in that, albeit scant, corpus of [p 423] international jurisprudence. It is the approach that the Court adopted in the past in interpreting the requirement of discovery of a "new fact" as grounds for an application for revisionFN8. In its Judgment of 10 December 1985 (Application for Revision and Interpretation of the Judgment of 24 February 1982 in the Case concerning the Continental Shelf (Tunisia/ Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) (Tunisia v. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya)), the Court, while refraining from taking an explicit position on this point, nevertheless treated the documents presented by Tunisia in support of its Application for revision as "facts". The Court declared the Application inadmissible because those facts did not satisfy two of the conditions for admissibility laid down in Article 61: that ignorance of the new fact by the Applicant must not be due to negligence and that the new fact must be of such a nature as to be a decisive factorFN9. This conclusion implies that the Court acknowledged that the documents constituted "facts" within the meaning of Article 61.
FN6 A proposal by Italy to insert the word "document" in the text of the Article was withdrawn after Mr. Politis pointed out that "the discovery of a document was included in the discovery of a fact" (League of Nations, Minutes l- VIH of the Third Committee, First Assembly, Records, p. 375).
FN7 See, for example, M. Scerni, "La procédure de la Cour permanente de Justice internationale", RCADI, Vol. 65 (1938), p. 672; Paul Renter, "La motivation et la revision des sentences arbitrales à la conférence de la paix de La Haye (1899) et le conflit frontalier entre le Royaume-Uni et le Venezuela", Mélanges offerts à Jura} Andrassy, pp. 243, 245 ; P. Lalive, Questions actuelles concernant l'arbitrage international, I.H.E L, Cours 1959-1960, pp. 100, 101 ; W, M. Reisman, Nullity and Revision. The Review and Enforcement of international Judgments and Awards, pp. 38, 210; E. Zoller, "Observations sur la revision et l'interprétation des sentences arbitrales", Annuaire français de droit européen, Vol. XXIV (1978), pp. 331, 351 ; D. V. Sandifer. Evidence before International Tribunals, 1975, p. 453.
FN8 Other similar decisions by international tribunals may be cited. See, for example, the Heim el Chamant c: Etat ultemand case, Recueil ties decisions des tribunaux arbitrmtx mixtes, Vol. 3, pp. 54-55; more recently Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Genie Laeayo case, decision of 13 September 1997, para. 12. In its Judgment on the Application for Revision of the Judgment of 11 July ¡996 in the Case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia), Preliminary Objections (Yugoslavia v. Bosnia and Herzegovina), the Court took no position on this point, but the judges who produced separate or dissenting opinions addressed the issue and took it as self-evident that newly produced evidence, including documentary evidence, could constitute new facts within the meaning of Article 61 of the Statute; see, for example, the separate opinion of Judge Koroma it (I.C.J Reports 2003, p. 34, para. 2); dissenting opinion of Judge Dimitrijevic (ibid., pp. 54 and 55, paras, 6 and 9).
FN9 I.C J Reports I9S5, pp. 206 and 213, paras. 28 and 39.
34. By refraining from expressly addressing the issue of the admissibility of documents or other evidence presented in support of an application for revision, the present Chamber also seems to endorse a broad interpretation of what may constitute a "fact" within the meaning of Article 61 of the Statute of the Court. On this point I find the Chamber's Judgment, with which 1 am regrettably unable to associate myself, a positive development in jurisprudence of which I am pleased to take note.
35. I have come to the conclusion that, taken overall, the material and information that El Salvador presented in these proceedings as "new facts" largely satisfy the conditions laid down by Article 61 of the Statute of the Court. Given that the ratio decidendi of the 1992 Judgment in respect of the sixth sector of the land boundary is, in my opinion, explained in paragraphs 308, 309 and 321 of that decision (no evidence of an abrupt change of course of the river; lack of scientific evidence that the previous course of the river was such that it debouched in the Estero [p 424] La Cutú), any evidence demonstrating the fact of the Goascorán avulsion may he of such a nature as to be a decisive factor.
36. During the present proceedings. EI Salvador produced technical evidence that irrefutably demonstrates, in its view, the existence of the old bed, which the Goascorán allegedly left following an avulsion and which debouched into the Cutú inlet. El Salvador also produced scientific evidence contained in an expert report which states categorically that an abrupt change in the course of the river occurred after the Spanish colonial authorities had defined the boundary between the Alcaldía Mayor de Tegucigalpa and the municipality of San Miguel as following the riverbed, and that the Cutú inlet and its distributory channels were the primary outlets of the Goascorán at the time when the old course was abandoned.
37. To this new evidence should be added the copies of the "Carta Esférica" and of the report of the expedition of the brigantine El Activo recently discovered in the Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago, by means of which EI Salvador seeks to weaken the probative force of the only evidence on which the Chamber based its determination of the course of the boundary in the sixth sector in 1992, namely copies of the same documents held at the Madrid Naval Museum and produced by Honduras in the original proceedings. In the absence of other evidence, it was exclusively on the basis of these copies that the Chamber decided that the boundary line should follow the present course of the Goascorán as far as its mouth in the Gulf of Fonseca, north-west of the Islas Rama-ditas.
39. Any assessment of the terms "diligence" and "negligence" is likely to be highly subjective owing to their abstract content. It is thus generally not possible to determine a priori whether conduct has been diligent or negligent. The degree of diligence or negligence involved must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, having regard to the context. In examining an application for revision, each individual situation must be considered, taking into account, in particular, the nature of the facts presented as "new facts", the means of access to these "facts" by the party applying for revision, and the conduct of the parties.
40. The arguments employed by El Salvador to demonstrate its diligence, or at least its lack of negligence, in presenting the new evidence that it produced in support of its Application for revision seemed to me, in any event, to be persuasive (except for the arguments concerning the material that it characterizes as "historical evidence", which in reality consists of two geographical works by Honduran authors published in Honduras). The unstable social and political situation in El Salvador resulting from the violent civil war raging on its territory during the Court's examination of the case, the unavailability of technical facilities that would have enabled that State to obtain certain important evidence to substantiate its allegations, difficulties in gaining access to some of the new material and, in the case of the "Carta Esférica" and the logbook of the El Activo expedition, the impossibility of consulting all existing sources of cartographic information, go a long way towards explaining, in my opinion, why the evidence on the basis of which El Salvador sought to have the 1992 Judgment revised was not presented sooner.
41. I do not know whether the Chamber, had it been aware in 1992 of the information produced by El Salvador during these proceedings, would necessarily have taken a different decision from that actually taken. At this stage, the present Chamber is merely required to rule on the admis-sibility of the Application for revision without taking a position on the merits. I have therefore confined myself to ascertaining whether the material that El Salvador presented as "new facts" satisfied the conditions laid down by Article 61 of the Statute of the Court. On this point, I reached an affirmative conclusion: the conditions were satisfied and the Application for revision was therefore admissible.
42. Having concluded, erroneously in my view, that the ratio decidendi of the 1992 Judgment in respect of the sixth sector of the land boundary was not related to the substance of the dispute but to its previous history, and that the new facts presented during the proceedings were therefore not of such a nature as to be a decisive factor, the Chamber decided that the Application for revision filed by El Salvador was inadmissible. It follows that the second stage of the revision proceedings, during which the Chamber would have had to rule on the merits of the Application, cannot commence. This is regrettable, since a fresh examination of the merits [p 426]of the dispute � limited, of course, to the sixth sector of the land boundary � would have allowed the Court to confirm or revise the 1992 Judgment on the basis of considerably more abundant and reliable information than had been available to the Chamber during the original proceedings. A new decision on the merits, relating to the sixth sector, might have better served the cause of justice than the 1992 Judgment, inasmuch as the better informed a court is, the greater are its chances of adopting correct decisions. To my great regret, and for the reasons men-tioned in this opinion, I have no choice but to express my disagreement with the present decision holding inadmissible the Application for revision filed by El Salvador.

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