What is territorial leasing? State-level territorial leasing has never been a clearly defined activity in international law or relations, but defining it is necessary to understand it. As defined by experts, a 'territorial lease is an agreement—usually a treaty—that creates sovereign-like rights for one state on the territory of another through an arrangement that generally emulates a lease in private law.'
In the above case, the rights established by a territorial lease comprise a servitude that limits how the lessor state displays its sovereignty in the area involved while extending the geographic area where the lessee state can exercise aspects of sovereignty.
Why is discussing territorial leasing relevant in this article? Those who follow news and politics from the Horn of Africa have been distressed by recent events between Ethiopia and Somalia. Tensions in the Horn of Africa escalated after landlocked Ethiopia reached a memorandum of understanding on January 1 with Somaliland, a secessionist region of Somalia, that would give Ethiopia a naval base and access to the Somali Sea. In return, Ethiopia will recognise Somaliland as an independent nation separate from Somalia, in apparent infringement of Somalia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
This region of Somalia faces the Gulf of Aden, which Ethiopia dreams of tapping into. Somalia has characterised the move as an act of aggression and pledged to defend its country at any cost. The African Union and the US have backed the territorial integrity of Somalia and urged all parties to cool tensions.
Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who has been engaging in endless diplomatic shuttling to garner support for his country, warned Ethiopia against implement the MoU. "This is a piece of land that belongs to Somalia, and [we] will never yield to whatever pressure comes on it," Mohamud said. When asked if his nation was prepared to go to war against Ethiopia, he said, "So far, Ethiopians haven't made moves to implement the illegal MOU. If they will, then that will be a problem at a different level."
With this new tension in the region, this article discusses the history of territorial leasing to neighbouring states, particularly ones with a more substantial military coupled with a troubled bilateral history. We will revisit the historical treaty between Bolivia and Chile to mirror Ethiopia's current plans and Somalia's potential predicament.
How Bolivia lost its sea
Bolivia will resentfully begin its 145th year as a landlocked country this year. Its Pacific coastline was lost in the war fought alongside Peru against Chile from 1879 to 1884. The primary cause of the war was territory leased for business purposes, and the two nations established a tax agreement. Chile entered a deal with Bolivia in 1874 to allow Chilean businesses to mine in the Bolivian mineral-rich Atacama Desert for 25 years without a tax increase. However, the Bolivian government later declared the 1874 treaty void because the Bolivian Congress never approved it.
The Bolivian government expected Chile to agree to more generous concessions as it did in the past border dispute with Argentina. Instead of renegotiating, as Bolivia expected, Chile sent a warship to Antofagasta, a port city on its northern border with Bolivia, where it landed 500 troops and occupied the town without resistance. Chile defeated Bolivia and redrew the map of South America by taking almost 50,000 square miles of Bolivian territory, including its 250-mile coastline on the southern Pacific Ocean.
Bolivia signed a peace treaty with Chile in 1904 in return for a promise of the 'fullest and freest' commercial access to the ports they lost. A critical factor in the war was the fact that under this treaty, the region became predominantly populated by Chileans who came to work for Chilean businesses, enabling Chile to occupy it without much resistance—a dire warning for Somalia if it allowed a 120 million plus Ethiopian population to inundate into Somalia.
Bolivia took Chile to the International Court of Justice which, in 2018, ruled against forcing Chile to negotiate ceding a slice of its territory to provide neighbouring Bolivia with a route to the sea. Bolivia never accepted the loss. In fact, every year on March 23, Bolivians celebrate a national Day of the Sea. Bolivia's navy (La Armada Boliviana) still exists without a coastline, and Bolivians sing the 'Anthem of the Sea,' which lists the names of coastal cities they hope will be Bolivian again: 'Antofagasta, beautiful land, Tocopilla, Mejillones, by the sea / With Cobija and Calama, they will return to the homeland again.'
What can Somalia learn from this?
Boundaries are normally fixed when states are created, but states, along with their populations and economies, continue evolving after that—and so do their perceived territorial needs. Territorial leasing is a mechanism by which states sometimes address these evolving interests without resorting to formal boundary changes. A lease essentially reallocates sovereign-like rights in a way that can be less dramatic or definitive than ceding territory from one state to another.
Problems arising from territorial leases usually result from the specific terms of the lease. Cuba's lease of Guantanamo Bay, for example, gave the US 'complete jurisdiction and control' over the territory, prompting Cuba's Supreme Court to rule that Cuba must consider the area as foreign for legal purposes, despite Cuba retaining 'ultimate sovereignty.' That left Cuba with no active authority on this piece of its sovereign territory.
The US-based political analyst based can be reached at [email protected]