Obligation to Negotiate Access to the Pacific Ocean (Bolivia v. Chile) was a case at the International Court of Justice.

When Bolivia gained independence from Spain in 1825, it controlled the Atacama Desert and thus had direct access to the Pacific Ocean.

[1][2][3][6][7][8][9][10] Also, Bolivia would be granted free trade rights at Chile's Pacific ports and allowed to establish customs facilities in them.

At this meeting, Chilean representatives said that they were "willing to seek that Bolivia acquire its own access to the sea, ceding to it an important part of that zone in the north of Arica and of the railway line which is within the territories subject to the plebiscite stipulated in the Treaty of Ancón.

[8] In 1975 and 1976, Chile and Bolivia agreed to a territorial swap with the Charaña Accords, but, under the terms of the Treaty of Ancón, this would require the approval of Peru.

[1][14] The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, made Bolivia's access to the ocean a key issue for his administration.

[3][10][20] In 2014, Chile raised preliminary objections to the court's jurisdiction, citing Article VI of the Pact of Bogotá, which prohibited ICJ proceedings on matters agreed upon prior to its agreement in 1948.

[3][20] Judge Gaja voted against the majority opinion's findings and, in a separate declaration, proposed that matters that had been settled could become unsettled through subsequent conduct.

[8] Alonso Dunkelberg suggests that the court ruled against Bolivia to avoid the possible precedent it would set "if passage of time in longstanding, stalemated disputes can change the way in which certain traditional terms are read.

[8] While the court ruled against Bolivia, Abdulqawi Yusuf, president of the court, said that the ruling "should not be understood as precluding the parties from continuing their dialogue and exchanges, in a spirit of good neighborliness, to address the issues relating to the landlocked situation of Bolivia, the solution to which they have both recognized to be a matter of mutual interest.

"[27] Evo Morales interpreted this as a "call to continue with the dialogue" and promised that Bolivia "will never give up" its pursuit of access to the Pacific Ocean.

[11][27] In response to the decision, Sebastián Piñera, the president of Chile, said that Morales "made us waste five years which could have been spent building a healthy relationship between the two countries.