Application for Revision of the Judgment of 11 September 1992 (El Salvador v. Honduras, Nicaragua Intervening)

The International Court of Justice issued a judgment in 1992 that settled a dispute over territorial boundaries between El Salvador (plaintiff) and Honduras (defendant). The 1992 judgment determined that the boundary between the countries followed the modern-day course of the Goascorán River (the river). In its decision, the court relied on several historical documents and other evidence of the governments’ course of conduct in relation to the boundary following the countries’ independence from Spain in 1821. During those proceedings, El Salvador argued that the boundary followed a prior course of the river before it abruptly and naturally changed to its current course, but the court rejected this interpretation. In 2003 El Salvador submitted to the court an application to revise the 1992 judgment based on new evidence purportedly showing that the boundary should follow the river’s old path. El Salvador pointed to new scientific evidence demonstrating that the river changed course in the mid-eighteenth century, as well as a new copy of a document called the Carta Esferica that was found in a private archive in Chicago. Honduras argued that El Salvador’s application should be rejected because none of the evidence was truly new nor did it have any impact on the reasoning behind the court’s 1992 judgment. Honduras further argued that the scientific research could have been performed prior to 1992 and that the new copy of the Carta Esferica was not materially different from other copies considered by the court in 1992.