The Italy–Tunisia Delimitation Agreement is a 1971

treaty A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between sovereign states and/or international organizations that is governed by international law. A treaty may also be known as an international agreement, protocol, covenant, convention ...

between

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

and

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

in which the two countries agreed to

delimit A delimiter is a sequence of one or more Character (computing), characters for specifying the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text, Expression (mathematics), mathematical expressions or other Data stream, data streams. An ...

maritime boundary A maritime boundary is a conceptual division of Earth's water surface areas using physiographical or geopolitical criteria. As such, it usually bounds areas of exclusive national rights over mineral and biological resources,VLIZ Maritime Boun ...

between them in the

continental shelf A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an islan ...

. The text of the treaty sets out a complex boundary in the

Strait of Sicily The Strait of Sicily (also known as Sicilian Strait, Sicilian Channel, Channel of Sicily, Sicilian Narrows and Pantelleria Channel; or the ; or , ' or ') is the strait between Sicily and Tunisia. The strait is about wide and divides the Ty ...

representing an equidistant line between

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

and Tunisia, with the exception of

Pantelleria Pantelleria (; ), known in ancient times as Cossyra or Cossura, is an Italian island and comune in the Strait of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, southwest of Sicily and east of the Tunisian coast. On clear days Tunisia is visible from the ...

and the

Pelagie Islands The Pelagie Islands (; ), from the Greek , meaning "open sea", are the three small islands of Lampedusa, Lampione, and Linosa, located in the Mediterranean Sea between Malta and Tunisia, south of Sicily. To the northwest lie the island of Pa ...

( Lampedusa,

Linosa Linosa (; ; ) is one of the Pelagie Islands in the Sicily Channel of the Mediterranean Sea. The island is a part of the Italian comune of Lampedusa e Linosa, part of the province of Agrigento in Sicily, Italy. It has a population of 430. Name ...

and

Lampione Lampione (; ; ) is a small rocky island located in the Mediterranean Sea, which belongs geographically to the Pelagie Islands and administratively to the ''comune'' of Lampedusa e Linosa, Province of Agrigento, region of Sicily, Italy. It is abo ...

). The maritime boundary around these islands, all closer to Tunisia, is made up of 13- nautical-mile arcs of territorial sea centered on each island which join one another and the equidistant line at the center of the Channel of Sicily mentioned above. The boundary terminates just short of an equidistant line between Malta and the Italian Pelagie Islands and the westernmost point of the boundary line forms a maritime

tripoint A triple border, tripoint, trijunction, triple point, or tri-border area is a geography, geographical point at which the boundaries of three countries or Administrative division, subnational entities meet. There are 175 international tripoints ...

with

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

.Charney, Jonathan I. ''et al.'' (2005). ''International Maritime Boundaries,'' p. 2863. On 23 January 1975, the countries by agreement added supplemental minutes to the treaty, including a map of the boundary and 32 individual coordinate points that define it. It came into force on 6 December 1978 after it was

ratified Ratification is a principal's legal confirmation of an act of its agent. In international law, ratification is the process by which a state declares its consent to be bound to a treaty. In the case of bilateral treaties, ratification is usuall ...

by both countries. The treaty was signed in

Tunis Tunis (, ') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Tunisia. The greater metropolitan area of Tunis, often referred to as "Grand Tunis", has about 2,700,000 inhabitants. , it is the third-largest city in the Maghreb region (after Casabl ...

on 20 August 1971 and its full name is ''Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Tunisia and the Government of the Italian Republic concerning the Delimitation of the Continental Shelf between the two Countries''.

Notes

References

* Anderson, Ewan W. (2003). ''International Boundaries: A Geopolitical Atlas.'' Routledge: New York.
OCLC 54061586
* Charney, Jonathan I., David A. Colson, Robert W. Smith. (2005). ''International Maritime Boundaries,'' 5 vols. Hotei Publishing: Leiden. ; ; ; ;
OCLC 23254092

External links

Full text of agreement
{{DEFAULTSORT:Italy-Tunisia Delimitation Agreement 1971 in Italy 1971 in Tunisia Treaties concluded in 1971 Boundary treaties Italy–Tunisia border Treaties of Tunisia Treaties entered into force in 1978 Treaties of Italy Mediterranean Italy–Tunisia relations