Ghana’s immediate past Attorney-General Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong has described her working relationship with her successor Ms. Gloria Akuffo as “great” as she hands over the baton in Ghana’s maritime boundary dispute with Ivory Coast.
Mrs. Appiah-Oppong left Hamburg, Germany for Accra after a formal handing over this week.
She informed the Special Chamber at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) that as a result of a change in government, she was no longer Ghana’s Agent on the case.
Speaking in an interview with the Daily Graphic, Mrs Appiah-Oppong described her workings at the ITLOS on behalf of Ghana as an honour.
“Working with Gloria on this case has been great. The team has been excellent and I wish Ghana pulls through victoriously in the long run,” she told the state-owned media.
“As you may be aware, there has recently been a change in government in Ghana. Since then, the current and former government have worked together closely to ensure the smooth running and continuity of the case,” Mrs Appiah-Opong said before the oral submission on Monday.
She promised both past and pre administrations were committed to Ghana’s national interest, adding, “this unity is shown by my presence here alongside my successor as Attorney-General, Ms Gloria Afua Akuffo.”
“I am delighted now to hand over the role of Agent to the capable hands of Ms Akuffo for this important final stage of the case, and so I ask you to call on her to introduce Ghana’s first round of oral submissions,” Mrs Appiah-Opong stated.
Ms. Akuffo then prayed the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to uphold Ghana’s position on the maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.
“Ghana, respectfully, asks you to affirm the customary equidistance boundary as our maritime boundary. In carrying out your task, you are assisted by a wealth of maps and charts which set out this boundary and which have been made available to you,” she said.
According to Ms Akuffo, the case was “not that of maritime delimitation but rather a request to declare the existence of a boundary, to which the parties have themselves long agreed and delimited in practice and in consequence”.
“Ghana asks this Special Chamber not to be swayed by the rather extravagant case Cote d’Ivoire seeks to present here by relying on a bisector theory and its related maps to create a huge area as the so-called area in dispute,” the Attorney-General prayed the court.
