Latest update August 2nd, 2026 12:06 AM
A NEW INTERNATIONAL LAW
We have to be careful that in rewriting our foreign policy we do not rewrite our geographical history. Every school child must or will be taught at some time or the other that Guyana has three main rivers: the Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice.
Do not be surprised if tomorrow students begin to refer to those rivers as the Demerara Watercourse, the Essequibo Watercourse and the Berbice Watercourse.
The Corentyne River is now being referred to as a watercourse and for no other purpose than to defend the absurd contention by President Jagdeo that Guyana should enjoy shared sovereignty or user access to the river.
If Guyana believes that it has a right to exercise sovereignty over part of that river by virtue of it being a border river, then why did the President speak about shared sovereignty or user access.
The situation gets mind-boggling. Yesterday, I picked up the Kaieteur News and read the most astonishing headline that I had ever read. It stated that nothing exists that determines the status of the Corentyne River.
Well, if nothing exists that determines the status of the Corentyne River, why then has Guyana been historically accepting Suriname’s sovereignty by respecting that country’s right to license fishing vessels, by not issuing diplomatic notes of protest after each time our eastern neighbor has seized a fishing vessel?
If nothing exists to determine the status of the Corentyne River, then why did Guyana, years ago, apply to the Surinamese for permission to operate a boat service from Orealla?
When I continued to read that article and the nonsense emanating from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I felt ashamed at our foreign service to have attempted to find some justification for the equally outrageous comments from our President about user access and shared sovereignty of the river.
For the benefit of those in Takuba Lodge who do not know, let me inform them that there is a history to Suriname’s exercise of sovereignty over that river.
Instead of reading waterways conventions, those out of the know should dedicate some of their time to the process of understanding the border issues with Suriname.
There is the matter of the Corentyne River and there is the larger maritime boundary for Guyana’s territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone of which the Arbitral Tribunal on the Law of the Sea Convention pronounced.
Then there is the territorial controversy linked to the New River Triangle. These are things which I expect even the most junior Foreign Service Officer to be fully acquainted with.
I hope that we are not preparing them through an over indulgence in conventions such as the United Nations Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses.
This convention, which has not been ratified by the United Nations membership, is now being said to generate principles of international law which supports the contention that Guyana should have equal user rights.
Those who make this claim are rewriting the sources of international law. An ungratified convention cannot be the basis of international law.
Further, even if by some stretch of the imagination that convention could be said to have some relevance to Guyana, it deals with non-navigational uses of watercourses such as water management.
Navigational uses of watercourses on the other hand do not have their own convention and therefore even if someone wanted to argue that Suriname’s recent assertion of sovereignty over the Corentyne River was in violation of some international law, it certainly could not be the convention of non navigational uses of watercourses since the issue involved the seizure of a ship.
The issue in contention remains that Guyana has built sugar factory which requires use of the Corentyne River, but it has not negotiated any protocols with its eastern neighbor to deal with the movement of sugar boats. Perhaps it is awaiting a UN Convention of the movement of sugar ships.
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