POLICY BRIEF article
Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. International Studies
This article is part of the Research TopicBridging regional gaps: The intersection of maritime security and sustainable development in AfricaView all articles
Kenya's Blue Rebalancing After the Somalia v. Kenya Maritime Delimitation Judgment: A Strategic Toolkit for Restoring Leverage
Provisionally accepted
- Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha, China
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The October 2021 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Kenya-Somalia maritime boundary dispute significantly undermined Kenya's strategic and economic interests. This policy brief proposes a non-militarized toolkit for Kenya to regain leverage. The toolkit combines legal innovation through the exploitation of ambiguities in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), economic statecraft via the issuance of blue sovereign bonds, and narrative reframing that consistently highlights Somalia's governance failures. By leveraging regional alliances and multilateral partnerships, Kenya can mitigate the adverse impacts of the ruling, safeguard its maritime interests, and assert leadership in regional maritime governance without escalating tensions. This approach offers a replicable model for smaller states navigating territorial disputes in the wake of unfavorable legal rulings.
Keywords: Maritime boundary dispute, non-military leverage, UNCLOS, Strategic countermeasures, Kenya-Somalia relations
Received: 05 Aug 2025; Accepted: 20 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jie Sun, sunjie2026@126.com
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