ARTIFICIAL BORDERS: CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2024

An artificial border is a boundary between countries that has been constituted by means produced by man, and therefore different from natural ones. For example, the railings in the city of Melilla that separate Spain from Morocco is an artificial border.

The means that delimit the artificial borders can be constructions, objects, cultural differences or imaginary lines established through calculations and expressed in the form of geographical coordinates on maps.

Mexico-USA border

The main feature of artificial borders is that they have been created by man, and not by nature. For this reason, they differ from natural borders in that they support their limits on natural features that have been produced by geographical accidents, such as mountains, rivers, valleys, among others. Artificial borders are those that are not supported by natural features.

Although in everyday language the term border is used in a restricted sense to refer to that line that constitutes the boundary between two countries, in the academic world the term denotes an entire region shared between two countries, much broader than the line boundary between the two. In this article we will refer to the term border in its restricted sense.

The artificial border fulfills the same function as the natural border of demarcating the existing limit between two territories, with the only difference that it is created by man through artificial means.

Legally, in International Law, there is no difference between artificial and natural borders.

Types of artificial borders

According to different authors, there are three types of artificial borders:

Artificial barrier

Artificial barriers are those artificial borders that are physically built in the place of the limit that is intended to be established.

They can be, for example, walls, bridges, monuments or buoys in the sea. On some occasions, these barriers are built for political purposes between two countries or territories.

Geometric border

They are artificial borders established using geometric measurements as a reference of the limits.

These measurements can be, for example, in the form of geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude), or in the form of kilometer measurements, nautical miles, cardinal points, among others.

Cultural frontier

A cultural border is one that separates two or more cultural areas, these being geographic territories in which common cultural patterns are repeatedly identified.

For this reason, in this case the border limit is established at the point that separates two different cultural areas.

Examples of artificial borders

Berlin Wall

The former Berlin Wall is a good example of an artificial border of the artificial barrier type. This Wall was built in the German city of Berlin in 1961, the year in which Germany was divided into two independent republics: the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic.

Its construction was intended to separate and differentiate the territory of Berlin belonging to the Federal Republic of Germany, from the territory of the German Democratic Republic.

Therefore, this wall not only divided the city into two - East Berlin (GDR) and West Berlin (FRG) - but also separated West Berlin from the rest of the territory of Democratic Germany that surrounded it.

The wall was in total more than 120 kilometers long and 3.6 meters high, and served, until 1989, as an artificial border imposed by the Germans given their political situation at that time.

On the other hand, this Wall also constituted, in a certain way, an artificial border at the political-cultural level, since both German republics represented two political ideologies that faced each other for many years in the so-called “Cold War”.

The GDR represented the communist system of government, and the FRG represented the capitalist West. During the years of its existence, the Wall that divided both republics was an important and indisputable symbol of this marked ideological differentiation.

Border wall between Mexico and the United States

The wall that is located on the border between the United States and Mexico is a security fence built by the United States from the year 1994 that, although it is located on the natural limits previously established between both countries, at present it also works as an artificial border.

Its declared objective by the United States government is to prevent the illegal entry of immigrants to the country, so it can be said that, in a certain way, it is a border with political functions - specifically security - imposed by the United States government.

This wall covers a total length of 3,180 kilometers, and is equipped with motion detectors, high intensity light reflectors, night vision equipment, permanent surveillance, electronic sensors and three containment barriers.

The

"Treriksröset" is the name given to a stone mound located on the border that is shared by the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland and Norway.

This construction was erected, artificially, to represent the point where the border limits of the three countries meet, which constitutes it as an artificial border.

The Treriksröset is the northernmost point in Sweden, and the westernmost point in Finland.

Maritime boundaries

The measurement on the basis of which maritime borders are established is an example of artificial borders established on the basis of geometric calculations.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is an international treaty, signed by 167 States, based on which the maritime territories of the signatory parties are delimited, which in turn are subdivided into different categories: territorial sea, zone contiguous, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.

The sovereignty of countries and the activities that can be carried out within each of these categories vary. Each of these zones is measured geometrically.

Thus, for example, according to this Convention, all the signatory States have the right to delimit the width of their territorial sea up to a limit of 12 nautical miles from a baseline determined by the same Convention.

Similarly, the Contiguous Zone is the zone adjacent to the territorial sea, and cannot extend more than 24 nautical miles from the baseline of the country.

Finally, the Exclusive Economic Zone is the maritime area that cannot extend more than 200 nautical miles from the baseline.

References

1. ÁLVAREZ, L. (2007). Public International Law. Accessed July 12, 2017 on the World Wide Web: books.google.com
2. FERNÁNDEZ, M. (2008). Historiography, methodology and typology of borders. Consulted on July 12, 2017 on the World Wide Web: magazines.um.es
3. GUO, R. (2013). Border-Regional Economics. Retrieved July 10, 2017 on the World Wide Web: books.google.com
4. NWEIHED, K. (1992). Frontier and limit in its world framework: An approach to “frontierology”. Retrieved July 10, 2017 on the World Wide Web: books.google.com
5. Wikipedia. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 10, 2017 on the World Wide Web: wikipedia.org.