Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have formally ended a decades-long territorial dispute over three small islands in the Gulf of Guinea, signing an agreement at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa on Tuesday. The accord commits both nations to respect a May 2025 ruling by the International Court of Justice (the UN's principal court for resolving disputes between states, based in The Hague), which found in favour of Equatorial Guinea over the 30-hectare island of Mbanie and two smaller islets, Cocotiers and Conga — territories that have been contested since the early 1970s and lie in potentially oil- and gas-rich waters. The dispute had its roots in competing colonial-era treaties, with Gabon claiming sovereignty under a 1974 agreement and Equatorial Guinea asserting rights inherited from Spain upon independence in 1968, and the signing marks what the AU Commission chairperson called the close of a conflict that had lasted far too long.