Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire Meet Over ITLOS Ruling Implementation
Ghana and Cote d’ Ivoire on Thursday started a two-day consultative meeting in Accra to deliberate on outstanding issues holding up the implementation of the ruling by the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on the maritime boundary dispute between the two countries.
The 16-member implementation committee of Ghana, which include the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Ms Gloria Akuffo, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchway and representatives of the Ministries of Defence, Energy, Lands and Natural Resources, the Petroleum Commission and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), is led by the Senior Minister, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo.
The delegation from Cote d’Ivoire is led by the Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Mr Adama Toungara, together with officials from ministries, organisations in the energy sector and security services.
Ghana team
Mr Osafo-Maafo said the meeting, which was a follow up to an earlier meeting held in May 2018 at Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, was part of the process towards a smooth implementation of the judgement.
At the meeting in Abidjan, he said Côte d’Ivoire shared with Ghana a document on the plotting of the coordinates in accordance with the ITLOS decision of the maritime boundary between the two countries on a nautical chart at a scale of 1:1 million.
The two countries, Mr Osafo-Maafo said, had since reviewed in detail the plots and have agreed on them.
Additionally, the two countries proposed that two technical teams worked together to validate the plotting of the ITLOS coordinates as presented by Côte d’Ivoire.
Following the successful work of the two countries, Presidents Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Alhassan Dramane Ouattara signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) to collaborate in six strategic areas of cooperation in October, 2017.
