## Facts

- Dubai and Sharjah, two emirates within the United Arab Emirates, disputed the location of their mutual land boundary and maritime boundary.
- Historically, territorial control in the region was fluid and tied to tribal allegiance and nomadic patterns rather than precise boundary lines.
- Under British protection (1892–1971), Britain sought to manage competing territorial claims, particularly after oil exploration increased the need to define concession areas.
- In 1956–57, a British political agent (Tripp), relying on surveys by a British official (Walker), issued decisions (“Tripp awards”) describing a land boundary, but without an authoritative accompanying map.
- Dubai declined to accept the Tripp decisions; Sharjah relied on them as fixing or strongly evidencing the boundary.
- Two land areas produced acute friction: (1) the Al Mamzer peninsula (coastal, near Dubai’s planned harbor works) and (2) Hadhib Azana (inland, near Sharjah’s airfield works).
- By a 1976 arbitration agreement, the parties submitted the dispute to an ad hoc arbitral tribunal empowered to determine both land and maritime boundaries; the tribunal issued its merits award in 1981.

## Issues

1. Whether the tribunal’s task was to demarcate an already fixed boundary (by applying the Tripp decisions as binding) or to delimit the boundary anew.
2. Whether the 1956–57 Tripp decisions constituted binding arbitral awards under international law or instead administrative/political acts.
3. What legal standards governed territorial title in the disputed land areas, including the relevance of effectivités, protest/acquiescence, prescription, and a critical date.
4. How to delimit the maritime boundary (territorial sea and continental shelf), including the use of equidistance, equitable adjustment, and the effect of islands and coastal works.

## Decision

- The tribunal held the Tripp decisions were not arbitral awards in the strict international-law sense; they were administrative boundary decisions by the protecting power and did not bind the parties as arbitral awards.
- Because the Tripp decisions were not binding arbitral awards, the tribunal treated its mandate as substantive delimitation rather than mechanical demarcation.
- The tribunal drew a land boundary that did not accept either party’s claims in full, allocating parts of disputed areas to each side based on the evidentiary record of historical title and later exercises of authority.
- For the maritime boundary, the tribunal used equidistance as a starting point but adjusted the line to reach an equitable result, including giving reduced (e.g., “half”) effect to certain islands/features to avoid disproportionate distortion.
- The award was final and binding on the parties under the arbitration agreement.

## Legal Principles

- An act described as “arbitration” is not a binding arbitral award unless it reflects arbitration’s essential attributes, including adjudication by a tribunal constituted for the purpose, procedural equality, and a law-based decision by independent adjudicators.
- Administrative boundary decisions by a protecting power may carry evidentiary or practical weight but are not necessarily binding as arbitral awards, especially where a party refused acceptance.
- In territorial disputes, title may be assessed through a combination of historical evidence and effectivités (actual exercise of authority), with attention to protest/acquiescence and the possibility of prescription.
- A “critical date” may limit the relevance of later acts intended to strengthen a position after a dispute has crystallized, while still allowing later conduct to evidence earlier claims.
- In maritime delimitation, equidistance can serve as a starting method, subject to equitable adjustment for special circumstances; small islands or features may be given reduced effect to avoid an inequitable result.

## Conclusion

The tribunal resolved an intra-federal boundary dispute by rejecting colonial-era British “Tripp” decisions as binding arbitral awards, then delimiting both land and maritime boundaries using territorial-title doctrines and an equidistance-plus-equitable-adjustment approach that reduced the influence of certain islands and features.


Dubai–Sharjah Border Arbitration, 91 I.L.R. 543 (Ct. Arb. 1993)