Bolivia will remain with no sea exit

On the first of October, the International Court of Justice (TIJ), based in The Hague, issued a judgment against the claim of Bolivia requesting the obligation of Chile to negotiate its sovereign exit to the Pacific Ocean.

The Bolivian lawsuit, filed in 2013, and accepted the following year, when considered competent by the high international tribunal to be appropriate, has ended establishing, by 12 votes in favor and three against, that "Chile has no obligation to negotiate with Bolivia a sovereign access to the Pacific", at the same time that in its ruling the court encouraged the parties "to continue to dialogue in search of a solution" to this old conflict.

The announced decision can be considered as a failure of the national strategy implemented by the Bolivian governments, headed for 12 years by the indigenous president Evo Morales, consisting of appealing to the international jurisdiction seeking to pressure its neighbour Chile to be forced to negotiate a maritime exit for Bolivia.

During the so-called War of the Pacific, 1879-1884, which faced Peru and Bolivia on one side and Chile on the other, the first two Andean nations lost broad swaths of their territories, with Bolivia being the most affected when losing, in favour of Chile, not only 120,000 square kilometres of its territory but also its 400 kms of coastline.

The last Peace Agreement between both countries, which dates from 1904, allows a special regime of free passage to the Pacific for Bolivia, both for goods and for people, through the ports of Arica and Antofagasta (formerly Bolivian). However since that time all Bolivian governments have maintained the claim of "a sovereign access to the sea and not a mere right of passage", finding at all times a closed negative by Chile, regardless of the color of their governments, considering it as a question of sovereignty and state.

In spite of the judicial setback for Bolivia, the possibility of an outflow of force seems discarded by that country that only bets for diplomatic and dialogue exits to its claims, in line with the changes that have taken place in the region in recent decades, also declared by their governments as "Zone of Peace". However, this conflict keeps relations between both countries in constant tension, with multiple border incidents referring to their territorial demarcations, but the traditional correlation of forces and circumstances in favour of Chile has varied substantially during the two mandates of Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has managed to articulate an absolute national consensus around the constant Bolivian demand for an exit to the sea, through peaceful, diplomatic and international routes, while on the Chilean side the forces of political and economic power and the army maintain a closed negative but their Public opinion remains divided.

To the above we must add that the economic consequences of this old dispute are already damaging Chile openly, since after the nationalization of natural resources in Bolivia the Government decided not to export its huge production of natural gas via Chile, nor sell it either.

The Chilean economy must import a large part of its energy from distant countries, to which must be added the enormous importance that the Bolivian economy has acquired, both in terms of its constant and stable growth as in its reserves of important strategic natural resources, such as the rare and quoted lithium mineral essential for the development of digital age technologies.

While it is fair to say that the judgment of the Court of The Hague represents a setback and a lost battle for Bolivia it also seems certain that this country and its authorities will continue to insist with perseverance, by all possible peaceful means, on their just claim of a way out the sea, which was snatched by Chile as a war booty, to directly benefit the then all-powerful British economic interests, which encouraged that conflict and managed to seize the decades-long monopoly of strategic natural resource resources, important at that time, as they were organic phosphates and copper.