INTRODUCTION

In its resolution 687 of 8 April 1991 which presented to Iraq the bill for its invasion of Kuwait and for Operation Desert Storm, the Security Council among many other things demanded that Iraq (and Kuwait) respect the inviolability of their mutual international boundary. In the same resolution, the Security Council considered this boundary to have been recognized by both neighbouring states in ‘Minutes’ agreed upon in 1963. However, notwithstanding this agreement on the delimitation of the boundary, the Council also noted that the boundary was still in need of demarcation. In paragraph 3 of the resolution, the Secretary-General was called upon to assist Iraq and Kuwait in this matter and, in the same paragraph, received some instructions on how to proceed. On 2 May 1991, he reported to establish the Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Demarcation Commission.

The following pages analyse international jurisprudence, notably of the International Court of Justice and of the IKBDC, in support of the thesis that has long been advanced in international legal doctrine, that adjudication on territorial title is a sixth traditional mode of acquisition of territory in international law? ‘Traditional’, because, apart from cession, conquest, occupation, accretion and prescription, adjudication, too, was known in Roman law as a mode of acquiring dominion over property. However, it was the only one of these Roman law modes not adopted in international law.