A border dispute is a territorial conflict between two or more states that occurs when the governments of the competing claims cannot agree on where to draw their borders. These disputes often lead to armed conflicts. The dispute can involve land or sea territory. It can also be a result of irredentism.
The laws governing property borders are complicated, and one mistake in a calculation can have serious consequences for owners of large plots of land. Moreover, the specifics of how the law applies to your land can be very different from your neighbors’ interpretation. For these reasons, boundary disputes happen all the time to residents and businesses.
A land border dispute can be resolved through negotiations or by a binding decision of a dispute settlement mechanism such as the International Court of Justice or the Arbitral Tribunal of The Hague. However, the process of resolving a territorial dispute can be long and complex.
This article examines the determinants of territorial disputes using a multivariate approach. By analyzing 10 cases of territorial dispute, we identify five factors—resource scarcity, locational feature, domestic politics, geopolitical competition and cultural difference—that decisively influence cross-border tensions in the disputed areas.
The sovereignty of the island of Phu Quoc is a case in point. Although Vietnam and Cambodia signed a treaty ostensibly settling the dispute, they have continued to exchange incursions on each other’s territory over the years. The dispute is rooted in irredentist sentiments and the island’s location, which is close to the border with Cambodia.
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