Centre for International Land and Maritime Boundaries (CILMB)

Specialised

Training Programmes

CILMB proposes specialised training programmes encompassing the whole range of legal issues related to maritime and/or land boundary delimitation, control and management, with particular emphasis on practical and technical aspects, through in-depth examination of actual cases.

Matters covered by our courses cover:

Land Boundaries

  • Territory, borders and sovereignty in international law
  • The regime of international boundary treaties
  • Substantive rules and principles on the delimitation of land boundaries
  • The role and management of evidence in border disputes
  • Mechanisms for the settlement of border disputes: negotiation and other non-binding mechanisms, international arbitration and litigation
  • Survey of the case law of the International Court of Justice and ad hoc arbitral tribunals regarding land boundary delimitation
  • Legal framework for the management of land boundaries: human and material transboundary flows, security issues, frameworks for transboundary cooperation
  • Management of transboundary natural resources

Maritime Boundaries

  • Legal regime of the different maritime zones
  • Development of the law, from customary international law principles to the 1958 Geneva Conventions and the 1982 UN Convention on the law of the sea (UNCLOS)
  • Various means of settlement of maritime disputes, including negotiation and relevant jurisdictional fora (ICJ, ITLOS, etc.)
  • Actual maritime delimitations in different settings: negotiation, ICJ, ITLOS, ad hoc arbitration
  • Legal principles of maritime delimitation in geographical context
  • Interaction of sovereignty over territory and sovereignty over maritime spaces.
  • Maritime delimitation in treaties and the jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals
  • Technical aspects of maritime delimitation: the role of hydrographers and other technical experts
  • Methodology of maritime delimitation: Determination of the relevant area and of the relevant coasts; construction of the provisional equidistance line
  • The construction of a maritime boundary: Application of the general methodology on maritime charts in several different settings (adjacent coasts, opposite coasts).
  • Relevance of existing agreements, subsequent agreement and practice
  • Incidence of the presence of islands in the relevant area
  • Joint exploration and exploitation of marine and submarine resources; joint development zones