page_title: Beagle Channel arbitration
section_title: The judgement
hierarchical_section_title: Beagle Channel arbitration / The judgement
caption_attribution_description: English: Arbitral award 1977, border running approximately along the center of the Channel. Copyvio from http://www.shoa.cl/cartas/data/cartas/17.jpg
context_page_description: On 22 July 1971 Salvador Allende and Alejandro Lanusse, the Presidents of Chile and Argentina, signed an arbitration agreement. This agreement related to their dispute over the territorial and maritime boundaries between them, and in particular the title to the Picton, Nueva and Lennox islands near the extreme end of the American continent, which was submitted to binding arbitration under the auspices of the United Kingdom government.
  On 2 May 1977 the court ruled that the islands belonged to Chile.
  On 25 January 1978 Argentina repudiated the arbitration decision and on 22 December 1978 started military action to invade both those islands and continental Chile.
context_section_description: A unanimous judgement was handed over to Queen Elizabeth II on 18 April 1977. The French judge André Gros gave a dissenting vote, not concerning the result but the reason. On 2 May 1977 the judgement was announced to the governments of both countries.
  It involved the border running approximately along the center of the Channel, and awarded both Chile and Argentina sovereignty over navigable waters in the Channel:
  "the Court considers it as amounting to an overriding general principle of law that, in absence of express provision to the contrary, an attribution of territory must ipso facto carry with it the waters appurtenant to the territory attributed" (§107 Report and Decision of the Court of Arbitration).
  Whaits island, the islets called Snipe, Eugenia, Solitario, Hermanos, Gardiner and Reparo, and the bank known as Herradura were awarded to Chile.  All of these lie near the southern bank of the Beagle Channel.
  Argentina was awarded all islands, islets and rocks near the north coast of the channel: Bridges, Eclaireurs, Gable, Becasses, Martillo and Yunque.
  At the eastern end of the Channel, the judgement recognized the sovereignty of Chile over the  Picton, Nueva and Lennox islands and all their adjacent islets and rocks.
  The territorial waters established by these coasts, according to international maritime law, established Chilean rights in the Atlantic Ocean.
  The Court sentenced also:
  the 1881 treaty had given Chile exclusive control of the strait (§ 31)
  the waters of the strait were likewise Chilean since Chile controls both shores (§37)
  the Chilean Point Dungenes is on the Atlantic (§24)
  the 1893 Protocol had not altered the basic nature of the 1881 treaty compromise (§74)
caption: Borderline (red line) through the Beagle Channel according to the arbitral award
exif: {}