The Integrationist Bicentennial Treaty and its impact on the legal architecture of the central american region

Abstract

In 2024, the Republic of Honduras ratified, after several years of waiting, the Bicentennial Integrationist Treaty, previously ratified by Nicaragua in 2021. With this treaty, both States have delimited their maritime borders in the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean without taking into account the interests of their neighbor El Salvador, a coastal State in the Pacific, which has expressed its opposition to the new boundary and to the non-opposability of the agreement. Consequently, far from contributing to the pacification of the region, this delimitation agreement has led to an increase in diplomatic conflicts and tension in the area. The instrument falls within the practice of consolidating boundaries through post-dispute agreements, but it does so in an especially sensitive context—the Gulf of Fonseca, a historic bay subject to a regime of community of interests, where sovereignty disputes and challenges of shared governance in the management of its waters continue to persist.