ICJ to decide on jurisdiction of the Guyana/Venezuela Border dispute

Jun 20, 2020 News

– Venezuela refuses to submit arguments to court
– says Court has no jurisdiction

On June 30th 2020 the International Court of Justice ICJ will begin its public hearings on the question of the court’s jurisdiction on the Arbitral Award of 3 October 1899 (Guyana v. Venezuela) via videoconference. This was noted in a press release made by the ICJ on May 29, 2020.

Guyana’s Foreign Secretary, Carl Greenidge.

Guyana’s Foreign Secretary Carl Greenidge, in a virtual town hall meeting hosted by the Guyanese American Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with South Florida Caribbean News on Saturday last, noted that Guyana is grateful for the opportunity to have its case heard by the International Court.
Greenidge also stated that Guyana will be able to plead its case before the court “once the court decides it has jurisdiction to hear the case” to which Venezuela claims it does not. Both countries were required to provide their arguments on its jurisdictions to which Guyana submitted theirs on the stipulated date.However, Venezuela refused to submit its argument on the basis that the ICJ has no jurisdiction to rule on the matter of the age-long border dispute.
The Foreign Secretary explained that prior to the establishment of the Republic of Venezuela, the country had approached Great Britain in the 1840s to define the borders to the west of Guyana; this process was ongoing up until 1890. Greenidge further explained that first instance concerned the standing of a treaty and the obligations of signatories to that treaty on the international law and it was not about ideology or neocolonialism because both states has voluntarily entered into the Geneva Agreement and both agreed that the role of the UN Secretary-General in the event of a disagreement over the resolution of the problem was as set out in the Geneva Agreement.
Greenidge added that in his opinion “the issue before the court concerns the ability of a state (Venezuela) to invalidate a treaty because it had a feeling that the benefit it enjoys under it are now not enough and in spite of its inability to force its will on its smaller neighbour (Guyana) and the rest of the world should allow it to continue its state of destabilization in perpetuity.
The UN Secretary-General had decided that the International Court of Justice, which is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, was qualified to make the final decision on the border dispute between the two countries. , Venezuela rejected the decision of the Secretary General and decried it as a hostile act against Venezuela. As a consequence to this, Guyana filed its application with the ICJ on March 29th, 2018. This application, Greenidge noted, was in agreement with decision of the UN Secretary General and all the relevant elements of the Geneva Agreement of 1966.
The resolution of the age long dispute is significantly important to the economic interest of both parties, since the area being disputed hold substantial natural resources. Some of the world’s largest untouched oil reserves lay in the east of Venezuela around the Orinoco river delta, close to the disputed border with Guyana.
A Venezuelan Presidential Decree (1787, as amended by Decree 1859) in 2015 laid claim to Atlantic waters off the Essequibo coast, with Venezuela’s navy had invading in the area on numerous occasions. The Decree was met with protest from Guyana, and it is this dispute that now lies in the hands of the ICJ.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) was established by the United Nations Charter in June 1945 and began its activities in April 1946. The Court is composed of 15 judges elected for a nine-year term by the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations. The seat of the Court is at the Peace Palace in The Hague (Netherlands). The Court has a twofold role: first, to settle, in accordance with international law, through judgments which have binding force and are without appeal for the parties concerned, legal disputes submitted to it by States; and, second, to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by duly authorized United Nations organs and agencies of the system.