A condominium (plural either condominia, as in Latin, or condominiums) in international law is a political territory (state or border area) in or over which multiple sovereign powers formally agree to share equal dominium (in the sense of sovereignty) and exercise their rights jointly, without dividing it into "national" zones.
Although a condominium has always been recognized as a theoretical possibility, condominia have been rare in practice. A major problem, and the reason so few have existed, is the difficulty of ensuring co-operation between the sovereign powers; once the understanding fails, the status is likely to become untenable.
The word is recorded in English since 1718, from Modern Latin, apparently coined in Germany c. 1700 from Latin con- 'together' + dominium 'right of ownership' (compare domain). A condominium of three sovereign powers is sometimes called a tripartite condominium or tridominium.
Condominium | Sovereign states responsible | Area (Km2) | Population | Date created | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Abyei Area | Sudan South Sudan |
10,546 | 124,390 | 9 January 2005 | The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the Second Sudanese Civil War, created the special status administrative area which is considered to simultaneously be part of West Kordofan state and Northern Bahr el Ghazal state. Following the independence of South Sudan in 2011, the area effectively became a condominium between the Republic of South Sudan and the Republic of the Sudan. |
Antarctica | Argentina Australia Austria Belarus Belgium Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Czechia Denmark Ecuador Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Guatemala Hungary Iceland India Italy Japan Kazakhstan Malaysia Monaco Mongolia Netherlands New Zealand North Korea Norway Pakistan Papua New Guinea Peru Poland Portugal Romania Russia San Marino Slovakia Slovenia South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela |
14,200,000 | 1,300 - 5,100 (seasonal) | 1 December 1959 | Antarctica is a de facto continental condominium, governed by the 29 parties to the Antarctic Treaty that have consulting status. Only 7 of these parties have territorial claims |
Brčko District | Bosnia and Herzegovina: | 493 | 83,516 | 8 March 2000 | Subnational condominium of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina created due to its multiethnic nature.[1] |
Gulf of Fonseca | El Salvador Honduras Nicaragua |
3,200 | 0 | May 24, 1980[2] | El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua exercise a tripartite condominium over parts of the Gulf of Fonseca and of the territorial sea outside its mouth.[3][4][5] |
Joint Regime Area | Colombia Jamaica |
0 | November 1993 | As an alternative to delimiting their sea boundary, Colombia and Jamaica share a maritime condominium called the Joint Regime Area in the Caribbean Sea by mutual agreement. The outer portion of the EEZ of each country otherwise would overlap in this area. Unlike other "joint development zones", this condominium appears not to have been purposed simply as a way to divide oil, fisheries or other resources. | |
Koalou | Benin Burkina Faso |
68 | ~5,000 | March 2008 | The area is administrated jointly by the "Joint Committee for the Concerted Management of the Kourou/Koalou Area" (COMGEC-K). Neither nation expresses sovereignty over the area, with a permanent solution still pending.[6] |
Lake Constance | Austria Germany Switzerland |
536 | 0 | No official treaty | Austria and Germany consider themselves to hold a tripartite condominium with Switzerland (albeit on different grounds) over the main part of Lake Constance (without its islands). On the other hand, Switzerland holds the view that the border runs through the middle of the lake.[7][8] Hence, no international treaty establishes where the borders of Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, in or around Lake Constance, lie.[8] |
Moselle | Germany Luxembourg |
0 | 1816 | The Moselle and its tributaries, the Sauer and the Our, constitute a condominium between Germany and Luxembourg, which also includes bridges, about 15 river islands of varying size,[9] and the tip of one island, Staustufe Apach,[10] near Schengen (the rest of the island is in France). | |
MOU 74 Box | Australia Indonesia |
50,000 | 0 | 1974 | Officially known as the Australia–Indonesia Memorandum of Understanding, the MOU Box was established by a bilateral agreement regarding the Operations of Indonesian Traditional Fishermen in Areas of the Australian Fishing Zone and Continental Shelf – 1974. The agreement recognizes access rights of traditional Indonesian fishers from Rote Ndao Regency in shared waters to the north of Australia with regard to the long history of traditional Indonesian fishing there, especially for trepang, trochus, abalone and sponges. The MOU Box includes the Scott and Seringapatam Reefs, Browse Island, and Ashmore and Cartier Islands.[11] |
Pheasant Island | France Spain |
0.00682 | 0 | 1659 | Pheasant Island is an island of the Bidassoa. Established as part of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, It is formally administered by Spain between 1 February and 31 July each year (181 or 182 days) and by France between 1 August and 31 January each year (184 days).[12] |
Under French law, Andorra was once considered to be a French–Spanish condominium, although it is more commonly classed as a co-principality, since it is itself a sovereign state, not a possession of one or more foreign powers. However, the position of head of state is shared ex officio by two foreigners, one of whom is the President of France, currently Emmanuel Macron, and the other the Bishop of Urgell in Spain, currently Joan Enric Vives i Sicília.[13]
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I don't know when the Hadf zone agreement was terminated, but it certainly was.