Neutral zones are always made up of territory under someone's
sovereignty. The parties to the agreements creating them agree
between themselves that they will both refrain from exercising some
element of sovereign rights in order to keep the piece. They're not
creating a "new entity", only a mappable area within which the
parties agree not to do something. The "neutral area" between the
Koreas is a demilitarized zone - the parties agree to not bring
weapons in - and left until later a decision as to which state holds
sovereignty over the strip of land across the peninsula.
The neutral zone between Gibraltar and Spain is Spanish territory, and
despite the agreement to keep it as an "empty quarter", Spain has
repeatedly encroached upon it, to the point where now it is only 3-5
feet wide.
The same situation exists between Spanish outposts in Morocco.
Between almost every country there is a "neutral" zone, within which,
to some degree, two parties agree to limit the exercise of
sovereignty. Most often thesee zones are as wide as the distance
between two customs posts - the area between them being the "neutral
area" where neither state considers it within their customs territory.
In Europe, we see customs territories joining together (i.e.,
Benelux), and there is no zone between them of any sort (axcept
perhaps for immigration - when you are between the two immigration
posts on a border, you are in a sort of "neutral" zone. The
territory, however, is always under "someone's" sovereigtny in whole
or in part.
The Saudi-Kuwait neutral zone was established (between Kuwait and Nejd
originally, imposed by the British in 1922) only to split rights to
oil produced there and stop fights at a time when there was no
delimited borders in the area. At least in the 1970s, Getty Oil Co of
the US held the Saudi concession and AMINOIL (owned by several US
firms) held the Kuwait concession. Arabian Oil Company (owned by a
Japanese firm) held the concession for oil off the coast of the
neutral zone). I don't know who gave the Japanese their concession,
but you can see two sovereign parties administer/share the zone - it
isn't an entity in and of itself like Switzerland that is "neutral
zone" as in "free, once created, from anyone outside having a right to
exercise sovereignty there".
Whose law applies? It depends upon whom a crime is committed, where
(in whose concession) it was committed and who caught the perpetrator.
A real good study of joint criminal jurisdiction is the NATO status of
forces treaty applying to treatment of crimes committed on bases,
regulating whether the sending state or the host state takes it.
Regards
Len Nadybal
--- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Karolis B." <kbajoraz@y...> wrote:
> Antarctica is for one thing really everyone's land (national claims
> put aside).
> But really what about the Moroco-Spain neutral areas?? are they no
> ones's or common land.
>
> I also always wondered about law in such places. Who has legal
> jurisdiction? in Antractica, in ESMO, in...?
> And also about legal jurisdiction on uninhabited US overseas
> territories. Like Navassa. US Federal law doesn't prohibit murder.
> Well, Navassa has no residents, no local law. So if someone was to
> take their parents-in-law to Navassa and leave them there to die, or
> outright shoot them, wouldn't they be not responsible?