Public International Law

Three Crowns has significant experience of advising on State-to-State disputes. Our work for States includes:

• Representing the Republic of Chile in the largest maritime-delimitation case to date before the International Court of Justice. The case centred on claims by Peru to maritime areas the size of Belgium and Ireland combined, concerning the interpretation of 1950s treaties that formed the basis of the present-day 200-mile maritime zones.
• Representing the Kingdom of Bahrain in Qatar v Bahrain, the longest-running case to date in the International Court of Justice. We successfully resisted maritime and territorial claims raised by Qatar that would have deprived Bahrain, an archipelagic State, of a third of its territory.
• Representing the Kingdom of Bahrain in proceedings commenced by Qatar before various UN bodies relating to the decision of Bahrain and the other “Quartet” States to sever diplomatic relations with Qatar in 2017. Recent matters include proceedings before the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization, related appeals before the International Court of Justice, and arbitration proceedings under the Acts of the Universal Postal Union.
• Representing the Republic of Chile in a case brought to the International Court of Justice by Bolivia, involving a claim that Chile has undertaken an obligation to negotiate sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean for Bolivia. The dispute concerns the legal effect of a 1904 peace treaty that fixed the land boundary between the two countries.
• Representing Barbados in a maritime-delimitation dispute with the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, before an arbitral tribunal constituted under Article 287 and Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
• Representing Eritrea in its maritime-delimitation dispute with Yemen before an arbitral tribunal under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
• Representing the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in its disputes with India arising out of the Indus Waters Treaty over natural resources management in the Kashmir region.
• Advising Belize in relation to a long-standing claim by Guatemala to Belize’s entire land territory and islands, as well as a delimitation of maritime entitlements.
• Representing the Republic of Vanuatu in the advisory proceeding before the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965.
• Representing Canada in trade disputes before World Trade Organization panels and the Appellate Body.
• Representing the Republic of Italy in its dispute with Panama over the arrest and detention of a Panamanian-flagged vessel, M/V Norstar, before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).
• Advising Timor-Leste in its negotiations with Australia and Indonesia over maritime boundaries and rights to petroleum and other resources (culminating in the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea).

• Advising an international oil company with respect to the maritime zones of the Republic of Cyprus, competing/encroaching claims, and redress available against such claims.
• Advising an international oil company with respect to Venezuela’s maritime claims, encroachments upon the maritime areas of neighbouring States, and associated issues.
  
• Advising an international oil company with respect to the Côte d’Ivoire – Ghana maritime boundary, including the implications of provisional measures ordered by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).
• Advising an international energy company on issues of international law and French law (civil and criminal) following the boarding of migrants on vessels and floating production storage and offloading units connected to its operations in an Africa.
  
• Advising an international energy company on issues of international law concerning exiled governments, its obligations to an exiled government, and whether sanctions prevent the performance of its obligations, which would allow it to invoke force majeure.