Territorial Disputes of Nicaragua - Boundary Dispute Along The San Juan River

Boundary Dispute Along The San Juan River

According to the Cañas-Jerez Treaty of 1858, as reaffirmed and interpreted by the arbitration of U.S. president Grover Cleveland in 1888 and by the judgment of the Central American Court of Justice in 1916, the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica runs along the right bank of the San Juan River, from its mouth in the Caribbean port of San Juan del Norte (formerly known as Greytown), to a point located three miles downstream from an old fortification known as Castillo Viejo ("Old Castle"), originally built to guard the access to Lake Nicaragua. Nicaragua is therefore sovereign over all of the Río San Juan, but Costa Rica has the perpetual right to navigate with "purposes of commerce" over the part of the river where the right bank is the border between the two countries. Costa Rica also has the right to accompany shipments of merchandise with "revenue cutters" to help ensure the payment of tariffs (a stipulation which has been rendered obsolete by the free trade agreements among Central American countries), but president Cleveland's 1888 award denied Costa Rica the right to navigate the river with "vessels of war," except with the consent of Nicaragua.

The treaty of 1858 also states that no taxes would be imposed on Costa Rican trade in goods, except by mutual agreement. A dispute emerged in 1998 when Nicaragua forbade the transit of Costa Rican policemen in the river, which Nicaragua claimed to be a breach of sovereignty, and imposed a US$25 fee, as well as a visa requirement, for any Costa Rican tourists who entered the San Juan River, alleging that the Spanish language phrase con objetos de comercio, which had usually been translated (including in President Cleveland's awards) as "with purposes of commerce," in fact had to be read as "with articles of commerce," and that tourists were not "articles." Costa Rican filed suit before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in The Hague, which ruled in 2009 that con objetos de comercio had to be read as "with purposes of trade," and that Nicaragua had therefore breached its treaty obligations by preventing free navigation with purposes of commercial tourism. On the other hand, the ICJ also ruled that Costa Rican police forces did not have the right to navigate the San Juan River with arms and ammunition, or to use the river to resupply their posts along the right bank. The ICJ also ruled that Nicaragua was obliged to recognize a customary right by Costa Rican inhabitants of the right bank of the river to practice subsistence fishing.

Historically, the dispute over the San Juan River has been exacerbated by the possibility that it might become part of a Nicaragua Canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, as well as Nicaragua's current construction of a dry ecocanal, have reduced the importance of the San Juan River as a possible route for interoceanic trade and have therefore, to some extent, eased the tensions between Nicaragua and Costa Rica over use of that waterway. Disputes between the two countries concerning the river and the associated frontier have nonetheless recurred in recent years.