Plurinational State of Bolivia

Abstract

Abstract Having become landlocked because of the 1879 War of the Pacific and the 1904 Peace Treaty celebrated with Chile, recovering sovereign access to the sea has been one of Bolivia’s main foreign policy objectives. The present chapter discusses Bolivia’s efforts on this matter based on the diplomatic doctrines of revisionism and pragmatism, as well as their respective legal expressions, the claim to the revision of the 1904 Treaty, and the separate claim concerning the existence of an obligation of Chile to negotiate Bolivia’s sovereign access to the sea. With the latter claim rejected by a recent Judgment of the International Court of Justice, the chapter also discusses the future perspectives of Bolivia’s maritime claim. In this way the chapter provides an overview of Bolivia’s engagement with public international law regarding this dispute.