Guyanese should not get distracted with all the cross talk on the Venezuelan border controversy. The United Nations Secretary General, acting in his official capacity according to Article 33 of the UN Charter, has referred the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in accordance with the terms of the Geneva Agreement to which Venezuela is a signatory. This is the most significant development in 28 years and the opportunity for a resolution must be seized.
For too long, Guyana has gone along with every one of the measures contained and elaborated by that Agreement which also has Great Britain as one of the parties. The Agreement is very clear that the only matter to be addressed was Venezuela’s claim that the 1899 full and final award was “null and void”. The proposed Mixed Commission in the Agreement, for instance, met to examine Venezuela’s proof of this “nullity”, but Venezuela was unable to proffer such proof and went on to make the same demand it is presently trumpeting: that the settled frontier between the two countries be revised, in a “practical settlement of the controversy”. Eventually, the Mixed Commission had to be abrogated after its stipulated four-year term because of Venezuela’s intransigence.
In 1983, it was Venezuela that proposed its controversy be placed under the auspices of the Secretary General of the United Nations, in concordance with Article IV Sec 2 of the Geneva Agreement, which complied with Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations concerning the means of peaceful solutions of controversies, as mentioned above. After much discussion, by 1989, there was finally an agreement on one of the means – the Good Officer process of the UN Secretary General. This kicked off the following year with a number of prominent individuals, such as Norman Girvan serving in that role. Girvan passed away in 2014 without any settlement to the controversy because Venezuela would once again not budge from its position.
Finally, towards the end of 2016, after more than a quarter of a century of the Good Officer process without any success, the predecessor to the present Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, signalled his intention to move the controversy to the ICJ if progress was not made within a year. Venezuela did not make any formal protest to this proposal and for it to now reject the UN Secretary General’s telegraphed decision, is to palpably demonstrate bad faith. However, its position should not have been totally unexpected either to Guyana or the Secretary General: for the latter to proceed signals that the process will move forward.
Venezuela is depending on its rejection of the jurisdiction of the ICJ to halt the process over which Guyana has exercised the patience of Job. Guyana will have to embark on a vigorous diplomatic campaign to bring its case to the attention of the international community – especially those with territorial disputes that demand settlement. India is one such potential ally, and it is hoped that in his mission to New Delhi last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge would have briefed his counterparts there.
It must be noted that during the 1980s, when Venezuela used the controversy to try to stymie our development plans, the Guyanese Foreign Service played a masterly hand to repel it by tagging Venezuela as an international bully to its poverty-stricken neighbour. In the present, Venezuela can be shown to be again attempting to hold back our development when at last we have an opportunity, brought about by the discovery of oil, to move out of that poverty. That ExxonMobil and Total are two of the players in our oil play should also add credibility to our lobbying efforts.
There is precedence for the court to deliver at a minimum, an opinion, on the controversy. This would be a great victory for Guyana, since it would demonstrate conclusively that Venezuela is unwilling to settle its controversy by one of the most trusted peaceful methods – Judicial Settlement.
