The aim of this work is to understand the arbitration dispute between Guinea-Bissau and Senegal that took place after the independence of the former, in which it claimed not to know the 1960 Franco-Portuguese agreement, with respect to the delimitation of the maritime border between the two countries. Both of which are present on the West African coast and have found a way to deal with the disputed border by creating the Joint Exploration Zone, a solution that makes this work possible and being an interesting mechanism for resolving tensions has been used in other African regions. Therefore, the bibliographic and documentary review of the theme was adopted as a methodology, which allows for a historical analysis of the trajectory of Guinea-Bissau, the progress in border agreements and the Joint Exploration Zone between these two nations, through the arbitration ruling given by the International Court of Justice, as well as the most relevant international norm in relation to the theme that is the United Nations Convention on the Ocean and Law of the Sea, which had an enormous importance as a legal framework for the Joint Exploration Zone. The research points out that the way Senegal mediated the agreement ended up favoring it, because due to this it managed to have more marine space through a legal agreement that allowed it to have more field for research and a greater possibility of finding resources. Besides reporting the Senegalese action, the research also demonstrates the fragility of Guinea-Bissau which presents enormous structural and legal systematic difficulties, impacting not only the acceptance of an agreement that is not favorable to it, in a perspective that recalls a dynamic of colonial exploitation.
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