DIPLOMATIC BELLIGERENCE

Oct 21, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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When it comes to issues concerning Guyana’s territorial integrity, Guyanese become very passionate. They should however be careful and not allow that love for Guyana to blind them to an objective assessment of the facts.

In recent days, we have been hearing and reading about an alleged act of aggression by the government of Suriname. In assessing this matter, the Guyanese people should avail themselves of all the necessary facts, including what international law has to say on the matter.

I know of no principle of international law which supports President Bharrat Jagdeo’s assertion that since Guyana shares a river border with Suriname that there should be user rights or shared sovereignty over the use of that waterway.

The Guyana Gvernment has failed so far to point to any principle of international law which would give Guyana such rights over the Corentyne River.

There are principles which in the absence of an agreement would allow for the demarcation of river boundaries where the river is either navigable or non-navigable. Such principles only apply when there is no agreement or treaty establishing the boundary.

However since there is a historical agreement establishing the river border between Guyana and Suriname, however unwieldy that arrangement is, the principles of a median line or deepest point in the channel do not apply.

These same principles, particularly the “thalweg” has been given expression in the other river boundaries such as those between Guyana and Brazil.

In terms of the Corentyne River, the border is the high-water mark. This gives Suriname sovereignty over the river and Guyana would have seemed to accede to this point when in 1995 it reportedly asked the government of Suriname for permission to start a riverboat service on the Corentyne.

If Guyana wishes now to no longer accept the high-water mark at the border with Suriname it should indicate this and move towards an international commission to definitively settle this and the more contentious issue of the New River Triangle.

Guyana has however found itself in yet another scandalous situation which is the product of incompetent political leadership. By seeking to deflect its mistakes onto others, it has chosen to engage in all manner of absurd claims about the need for user rights or shared sovereignty.

Guyana knew a long time ago that it was building a sugar factory. It knew then that one-third of the sugar cane for this factory would have to come from private farmers.

What we have now is a case where the factory is completed, but there is insufficient cane to ensure it works to full capacity because the anticipated private cane production did not materialise. This has to be the joke of the decade.

But it gets funnier. We built a modern sugar factory which is supposed to aid Guyana in reducing the cost of production so as to make local sugar competitive.

We built the factory but it seems that we forgot that in order to move the sugar we need to ship it out via the Corentyne River.

We built the factory but did not apply to Suriname to facilitate the movement of sugar boats on the river with the effect that Suriname seized the vessel for not complying with maritime regulations of which Guyana is fully well aware.

Let us not fool ourselves that the Surinamese were being aggressive. The Surinamese have been seizing unlicensed fishing boats in that river for years now.

In fact, as was reported in the local media when the crew of the sugar boat was in the lockups in Suriname, these sailors encountered the crew of a Guyanese fishing boat that was seized.

If Guyana is serious that Suriname used aggression in the recent incident it should refer the matter to the United Nations. Suriname has for decades now been exercising sovereignty over the Corentyne River.

Guyanese fishing boats have to be registered in Suriname in order to fish or use that river and the recent incident with the sugar boat is not the first incident in which Suriname has exercised territorial rights over the river.

At the centre of the recent imbroglio is therefore not so much Suriname’s aggression against Guyana, but Guyana’s incompetence in not recognising that it had to make arrangement for boats to traverse this waterway in order to pick up sugar from the factory at Skeldon.

Faced with a situation of poor planning, the Guyana Government is making all manner of wild pronouncements, pointing for example to the treaty it has with Brazil over the river border, and making mention of the ‘thalweg’, and saying that treaty sets a precedence.

That treaty outlines precisely where the border is in relation to the river separating Guyana and Brazil. There is therefore no need for resort of any of the irrelevancies that the Guyana Government is indulging in at the moment.

Guyana should sit with Suriname and work out the modalities of the use of the river. It should however not fool itself into believing that international law grants it any user rights or shared sovereignty.
There are no such rights under international law. Such rights have to be negotiated by agreement or treaty.

What is contained in international law is that a country has a right to exercise exclusive sovereignty over its territory, and clearly Suriname feels that the high-water mark is its territory, and has been for the past one hundred and fifty years.

If Guyana feels that it is no longer willing to accept this demarcation, then it is Guyana which is being belligerent.

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