Security Interests as a RELEVANT CIRCUMSTANCES in delimitation process in law of the sea and customary international law

In the Libya/Malta case, the ICJ regarded security factors as a relevant circumstance. At the operational stage, however, security interests did not affect the location of the continental shelf boundary in this judgment because the delimitation line drawn by the Court was ‘not so near to the coast of either Party as to make questions of security a particular consideration in the present case’. The same applied to the Greenland/Jan Mayen and Black Sea cases. It is interesting to note that the Court considered security interests to be a matter of distance. Yet so far there is no predictable standard on this matter. Like case law, it can be observed that the direct influence of security factors remains somewhat unclear in State practice.