Page 150 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

88 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES

of 1884 and 1886 with the Somali tribes, it was possible to refer the
matter to arbitration by the International Court, he replied:
I have also been asked whether there was not a case for a reference to the
International Court, because of the alleged conflict between the Treaty of
1897 and the agreement previously signed with Somali leaders___ In a
matter of this sort the Court would be bound to base its decisions on the
Treaty of 1897, which, as an international instrument, leaves no doubt as to
where sovereignty lies . . .l

In an article on the Ethiopian-Somaliland Frontier, D. J. L. Brown
comments on the above-mentioned statement by saying:
This statement demonstrated [that the United Kingdom] did not regard
the tribes of Somaliland, with which it had concluded the Agreements in
1886, as sovereign, or even as part-sovereign, entities which could be
recognised as persons in international law, but that it considered them as
I no more than subjects of the British Crown.2
!
I It may be noted that the Somaliland Protectorate controversy with
the British Government arose in consequence of the conclusion by
the United Kingdom of an agreement, in 1954, with Ethiopia by
which the parties reaffirmed their Agreement of 1897. Under this
Agreement about 25,000 square miles of British Somali territory was
1 ceded to Ethiopia. According to Gordon Waterfield, a delegation of
Somali nationalists which came to London
failed to persuade the British Government to postpone the implementation
of the Agreement (of 1954) or to find any court before which they could
plead that the 1897 Treaty was null and void because of the Treaties of
1884 and 1886 between Somali tribes and the British Government. There­
upon [the writer continues] they drew up a petition in February 1955 and
sent it to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.3
In their petition, the delegates stated that the treaties with the Somali
tribes did not give the British Government the right to cede or transfer
the ownership of the territories of the Protectorate, and that the
action of the British Government in concluding the Treaty of 1897
1 House of Commons Debates, vol. 537, col. 1686, 25 February 1955.
2 Brown, D. J. L., ‘The Ethiopia-Somaliland Frontier Dispute’, I.C.L.Q., 5
(1956), pp. 263-5.
It may be relevant to point out that in his award in the case of the Island of
Palmas (1928) Max Huber describes agreements concluded by foreign States with
tribal chiefs possessing no international status as follows: ‘As contracts between
a state or a company and native princes or chiefs not recognised as members of the
community of nations, they are not, in international law sense, treaties or conven­
tions capable of creating rights and obligations such as may, in international law,
arise out of treaties. But, on the other hand, contracts of this nature are not wholly
void of indirect effects on situations governed by international law ...’ See Award
Concerning the Island of Palmas (1928). A.J.I.L., 22 (1928), p. 897. ,
3 Waterfield, G., ‘Trouble in the Horn of Africa: The British Somali Case,
International Affairs, 32 (1956), p. 57.