From Territorial Conflict to Mutually Advantageous Development

• Author: Joseph E. Edmunds
• Pages: 305-307

Joseph Edmunds 305305

305305

305

From Territorial Conflict to Mutually Advantageous

Development

J O S E P H E. E D M U N D S

Former Ambassador of Saint Lucia

to the United States

19

When territorial problems between

neighbouring states are, for the most part, the

consequence of issues emanating from former

colonial powers, it becomes the responsibility

of countries which inherited the problems to

transform them into productive social and

economic enterprises for their mutual benefit

and development. The fundamental point is

that the social and economic development of

countries should not be constrained by past

historic happenings not of their making.

Developing countries, often with scarce

resources, should minimize the use of time,

energy, and economic resources in attempting

to explain, rationalize, define or defend the

sometimes-spurious intentions of former

colonial powers. History is replete with

arrangements made between such powers

which never contemplated the eventual

independence of the countries which they

divided in prescribed formulated boundaries,

nor the future social and economic

development of their populations. In some

cases, vested self-interest was the guiding

principle; in others, technical scientific errors

in boundary demarcations prevailed; and

more recently, international legal

interpretations have further compounded the

issues.

International Consultant

Countries are known to have declared war

to defend their perceived inherited sovereign

territorial rights. In so doing, vast economic

resources were diverted towards purchase and

production of armaments and the building of

military institutions. This has often resulted in

enormous suffering, sacrifice of human lives,

and the squandering of economic resources

sometimes aided and abetted by vested

interests other than the governments involved.

At this present time, with an increasingly

globalized world, often projected by some

authors as ‘a borderless world’, emphasis

should be placed on what could be the

combined strengths or synergistic possibilities

for trade facilitation and social and economic

development of neighbouring states.

When the resolution of territorial conflicts

is squarely left to independent countries after

the colonial powers have occupied their space,

it is incumbent upon those states to resolve

the occurrences of the past, not of their doing,

and to convert those residual happenings into

productive enterprises with available existing

natural and human resources.

Faced with this reality, neighbouring

countries with territorial conflicts should, with

resolve, in the best interest of the social and

economic development of their people and

in a spirit of their shared aspirations, adopt