page_title: Pedra Branca, Singapore
section_title: International Court of Justice case
hierarchical_section_title: Pedra Branca, Singapore / Territorial dispute / International Court of Justice case
caption_attribution_description: English: The Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, which is the seat of the International Court of Justice. Nederlands: Het Vredespaleis in Den Haag, zetel van het Internationaal Gerechtshof. Deutsch: Der Friedenspalast in Den Haag, Dienstgebäude des Internationalen Gerichtshofs. Français&#160;: Le Palais de la Paix, siège de la Cour internationale de Justice à La Haye (Pays-Bas). Español: El Palacio de la Paz, sede de la Cour internationale de Justice en La Haya (Países Bajos).
context_page_description: Pedra Branca is an outlying island and also the easternmost point of Singapore. The name means "white rock" in Portuguese, and refers to whitish guano deposited on the rock. The island consists of a small outcrop of granite rocks with an area of about 8,560 square metres. During the low water spring tide it measures, at its longest, 137 metres and has an average width of 60 metres. Pedra Branca is situated at 1°19′48″N 104°24′27″E, where the Singapore Strait meets the South China Sea.
  There are two maritime features near Pedra Branca. Middle Rocks, under the sovereignty of Malaysia, consists of two clusters of small rocks about 250 metres apart situated 0.6 nautical miles south of Pedra Branca. South Ledge, which is 2.2 nautical miles to the south-south-west of Pedra Branca, is a rock formation visible only at low-tide.
  Pedra Branca was known to sailors for centuries. It was originally within the territory of the Johor Sultanate, which was founded in 1528, and remained under the new Sultanate of Johor under the British sphere of influence following the signing of the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1824 between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
context_section_description: On 21 December 1979, the Director of National Mapping of Malaysia published a map entitled Territorial Waters and Continental Shelf Boundaries of Malaysia showing Pedra Branca to be within its territorial waters. Singapore rejected this claim in a diplomatic note of 14 February 1980 and asked for the map to be corrected. The dispute was not resolved by an exchange of correspondence and intergovernmental talks in 1993 and 1994. In the first round of talks in February 1993 the issue of sovereignty over Middle Rocks and South Ledge was also raised. Malaysia and Singapore, therefore, agreed to submit the dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), signing a Special Agreement for this purpose in February 2003 and notifying the Court of it in July 2003. The case was heard at the Peace Palace in The Hague between 6 and 23 November 2007.
  The ICJ delivered its judgment on 23 May 2008. It held that although Pedra Branca had originally been under the sovereignty of Johor, the conduct of Singapore and its predecessors à titre de souverain (with the title of a sovereign) and the failure of Malaysia and its predecessors to respond to such conduct showed that by 1980, when the dispute between the parties arose, sovereignty over the island had passed to Singapore. The relevant conduct on the part of Singapore and its predecessors included investigating marine accidents in the vicinity of the island, planning land reclamation works, installing naval communications equipment, and requiring Malaysian officials wishing to visit the island to obtain permits. In contrast, Johor and its successors had taken no action with respect to the island from June 1850 for a century or more. In 1953 the Acting Secretary of the State of Johor had stated that Johor did not claim ownership of Pedra Branca. All visits made to the island had been with Singapore's express permission, and maps published by Malaysia in the 1960s and 1970s indicated that it recognised Singapore's sovereignty over Pedra Branca.
  Like Pedra Branca, the Sultan of Johor held the original ancient title to Middle Rocks. As Singapore had not exercised any rights as a sovereign over Middle Rocks, the ICJ determined that Malaysia retained sovereignty over this maritime feature. As for South Ledge, the ICJ noted that it fell within the apparently overlapping territorial waters of mainland Malaysia, Pedra Branca and Middle Rocks. As the Court had not been mandated to draw the line of delimitation with respect to the territorial waters of Malaysia and Singapore in the area in question, it simply held that sovereignty over South Ledge belonged to the state which owned the territorial waters in which it is located.
caption: The Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, the seat of the International Court of Justice
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