Territorial Disputes and Conflict Management: The Art of Avoiding War by Rongxing Guo

Author:Rongxing Guo [Guo, Rongxing]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Peace, Political Science, Political Freedom, General
ISBN: 9781136630453
Google: A1-pAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17548938
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.3 The Ecuador–Peru boundary and the Cordillera del Condor (copyright © 1981 University of Texas at Austin. Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries).

The Peruvian–Ecuadorian boundary demarcation commission continued working until 1950 placing boundary markers. Mapping the Ecuadorian–Peruvian border was completed in early 1947; but in the Condor Cordillera stretch, east of the city Zamora, the boundary remained unmarked. The disputed area is a 78 km-long strip of mostly unpopulated, and little explored, territory deep in the Amazonian rainforest and almost inaccessible by land. However, during the following years, the situation came to a deadlock. While Peru held to the view that the border in the undemarcated area ran along the heights of the Condor range, Ecuador insisted that there was no technical basis for considering that mountain range as the border between the two nations. Ecuador hinted at the idea that the spirit of the 1941 Protocol, which had never mentioned the Condor range by name, would require the location of the border markers along the Cenepa river, immediately to the east of the range.

The Cordillera del Condor was once again at the center of the Ecuador–Peru border conflict from the early 1990s onwards. In 1995 a war occurred in the border area. The war had a serious impact on the local communities, and a reported 28 people were killed during the conflict. Of the 350 Indian communities on the Ecuadorian side of the border, 20,000 people were directly affected by the fighting, 8,000 of them were permanently displaced, and their habitats were destroyed (Franco, 1997). The peace plan was signed on February 17, 1995 and committed both countries to withdraw their forces “far” from the disputed zone. Normalization of relations was a slow process. The two countries refused to engage in face-to-face talks over the border negotiations. After the undeclared war, tensions still remained between the two countries, and the border, as it had for over 150 years, remained a source of and potential for conflict.

During the mid-1990s, political leaders of the two countries conducted various negotiations in order to fix their joint boundary. Official discussions between the foreign affairs ministers of Peru and Ecuador began in January 1996. However, nothing much came out all through the year except an agreement to provide a framework for a definitive solution on the border issue. In August 1997, the two nations signed an agreement aimed at ensuring transparent mechanisms in arms procurements. Following further negotiations, several commissions were established in order to examine the frontier markers on the ground of the Cordillera del Condor. Talks continued through 1998 and, thanks to the mediation efforts of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the United States, the Peace Agreement was eventually signed in Brasilia on October 26, 1998. This put an end to one of the longlasting territorial disputes in the Western Hemisphere.

Peru and Ecuador have eventually ended their border dispute by establishing a cross-border peace park, where only “ecological police” and not the military would be allowed to patrol. The Ecuadorean park comprises an area of 25.

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