Border controversy: “ICJ’s decision unlikely to create any surprises” – Greenidge

…ahead of today’s ruling on Venezuela’s preliminary objection

Guyana’s Agent on the Border Controversy case with Venezuela, Carl Greenidge, says that the local side is not expecting any surprises at today’s judgment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Spanish-Speaking country’s objections.
After exhausting all means of negotiation with Venezuela and the failed Good Office Process between the two South American neighbours, Guyana had moved to the World Court for a final and binding ruling on the October 3, 1899 Arbitral Award settling the land boundary between the two countries.

Venezuela had initially refused to participate in the proceedings, and had even challenged the court’s jurisdiction to hear the matter. But on December 18, 2020, the ICJ established that it has jurisdiction to hear the substantive case – something which Venezuela did not accept.
Consequently, the Spanish-speaking nation, in June 2022, filed preliminary objections challenging the admissibility of the case before the ICJ, a move which has since delayed the substantive hearing of the border case. Venezuela is claiming that the case is improperly before the court, and that such a case should not have been brought by Guyana, but by the United Kingdom – the then Great Britain, which had signed the 1899 Arbitral Award with Venezuela to demarcate Guyana’s boundaries. Guyana had been one of Britain’s colonies; it was known as British Guiana at the time.
Both Guyana and Venezuela had presented submissions on this matter before the World Court in November 2022.
On Monday, the ICJ announced that its President, Judge Joan E Donoghue, will deliver the court’s ruling on Venezuela’s preliminary objections today. “This impending decision is unlikely to create any surprises, because the Court is being invited by Venezuela to create chaos on, or add to, Venezuela’s mischief,” Greenidge told Guyana Times in a brief comment on Wednesday.
Greenidge, along with Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, SC, and Guyana’s Co-agent, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Ministry, Ambassador Elisabeth Harper, will be representing Guyana in court, along with the country’s team of international lawyers.

Greenidge, and by extension the Guyana Government, had previously contended that Venezuela’s objections are a blatant attempt by the Spanish-speaking country to delay the substantive border controversy case.
On November 18, 2022, Guyana presented arguments before the ICJ, rejecting Venezuela’s contention 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), 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.
Professor Sands had further told the ICJ that this preliminary objection is totally offensive against the Law of State Succession and the Law of Decolonisation. Venezuela simply alleging fraud or some other horrendous act against the former colonial power, and relying on the Monetary Gold Principle, he had contended, “is not so much of a case”.
Professor Sands, a King’s Counsel, had also argued that Venezuela’s preliminary objections have ignored the fundamental precepts of state succession: equalisation and self-determination. In light of this, he had deemed that country’s case “totally hopeless”.
He had declared that the “United Kingdom has no legal skin in this game. Venezuela’s preliminary objections are incoherent, legally misconceived and factually baseless. The preliminary objections ignore the realities of the 1966 Agreement and the Court’s jurisprudence on the indispensable third party.”
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, 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.