Malawi advised against taking Lake Malawi wrangle to ICJ

A political commentator, has advised the Malawi government to continue negotiating with neighbouring Tanzania on the Lake Malawi dispute before going to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Malawi government earlier announced its plans to take the lake dispute with Tanzania to ICJ after seeing no fruits in the mediation talks.

However, in an interview with this reporter, political commentator Wonderful Mkhutche said it would not be good for government to rush with the matter to the ICJ.

Mkhutche said in the modern world, going to ICJ is an important step but it cannot be more important than the two countries finding the way forward on the matter.

“Malawi has been frustrated by Tanzania cancelling the negotiations, recently. But this path still has to be given a chance before we go to international courts. Besides these two, African Union and regional political bodies need to help as well. These are high level disputes that are highly unavoidable when dealing with issues to do with resources and their use,” advised Mkhutche in an interview with Malawi24.

He added that disputes over resources usually have one party that can be qualified as an aggressor.

He said when disputes of such nature, like the Lake Malawi issue, come and die, it is mostly that the aggressor has been bullied by evidence and international opinion into submission.

Malawi and Tanzania have been fighting over the ownership of part of the lake since 2012.

Tanzania’s hide and seek on Lake Malawi talk angers Govt

Malawi maintains that the boundary is the shoreline of Lake Malawi as established by Article 1(2) of the 1890 Anglo-German Treaty hence the lake belongs to Malawi in its entirety.

On the other hand, Tanzania claims that the boundary is the median line of the lake based on principles of customary international law.

It even produced a new map showing the disputed portion of the lake as part of Tanzania.