The International Court of Justice today delivered a ruling, rejecting Venezuela’s preliminary objection in relation to Guyana asking the court for a final and binding ruling on the October 3, 1899, Arbitral Award settling the land boundary between the two South American nations.
“The Court concludes that the Geneva Agreement specifies particular roles for Guyana and Venezuela and that its provisions, including Article 8, do not provide a role for the United Kingdom in choosing or participating in the means of settlement for the dispute pursuant to Article 4,” the court outlined.
“Therefore, the Court considers that the scheme established by Articles 2 and 4 of the Geneva Agreement reflects a common understanding of all parties to that agreement that the controversy which existed between the United Kingdom and Venezuela on February 17, 1966 would be settled by Guyana and Venezuela through one of the dispute settlement procedures envisaged in the agreement.”
It was further positioned that, “In respect of the Good Offices process conducted by the Secretary General of the United Nations, again, the court observes that the United Kingdom did not seek to participate in the procedure set out in Article 4 to resolve the dispute, nor did the parties request such participation. Venezuela’s exclusive engagement with the Government of Guyana during the Good Offices’ process indicates that there was agreement among the parties that the United Kingdom had no role in the dispute settlement process.”
“…the preliminary objection raised by Venezuela must therefore be rejected.”
The ruling was 14-1, wherein 14 rejected the claim by Venezuela with one dissent.
On November 18, 2022, Guyana presented arguments before the ICJ, rejecting Venezuela’s argument that the United Kingdom (UK), and not Guyana, is the proper party to approach the court for a final and binding ruling as “incoherent, legally misconceived and factually baseless”.
Venezuela’s Executive Vice President Delcy Rodriguez had advanced that her country was not disputing the court’s jurisdiction to arbitrate the matter but instead asserted that Guyana is not the proper party to file the claim.
Her position is that because the UK, which she described as a “land grabber” and accused of a “cover-up”, was a party to the Arbitral Award which saw Guyana being “given” territory, and owing to Guyana being a former British colony, it was the UK that ought to have asked the ICJ to resolve the border controversy.
Having been decolonised since May 26, 1966, Guyana has rejected this argument with Professor Philippe Sands, a Professor of International Law at University College London, submitting that the UK “has no legal skin in this game” as Guyana is now a self-governing state.
Professor Sands had said that when Guyana became independent, the UK gave its consent to the United Nations (UN) and by extension, its judicial arm—the ICJ—by way of negotiating, signing, and bringing into effect the Geneva Agreement (1966), with the power to settle the border controversy between the two nations.
That Agreement, signed on February 17, 1966, is a treaty to resolve the conflict between Venezuela and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland over the border between Venezuela and British Guiana, and at that time was an active treaty between Venezuela and the UK, along with its colony of British Guiana.
When Guyana gained independence three months later, it joined the agreement as an independent nation alongside the UK and Venezuela, fully taking over the United Kingdom’s former position in talks with Venezuela regarding the border dispute, he had argued.
Then United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, in January 2018, decided that the case should be settled by the ICJ after exercising the powers vested in him to decide how the controversy should be settled by the 1966 Geneva Agreement between Guyana, Venezuela, and the United Kingdom.
He resorted to judicial settlement after the good offices process between Guyana and Venezuela failed. Within the framework of the 1966 Geneva Agreement between the two countries, the Secretary-General conducted good offices from 1990 to 2017 to find a solution to their border controversy.
The Spanish-speaking nation is laying claim to more than two-thirds of Guyana’s landmass in Essequibo and a portion of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in which more than nine billion barrels of oil have been discovered over the past six years.
Guyana, among other things, is asking the ICJ to declare that the 1899 Award is valid and binding upon Guyana and Venezuela and that Venezuela is internationally responsible for violations of Guyana’s sovereignty and sovereign rights, and for all injuries suffered by Guyana as a consequence.
