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– Venezuela boasts nothing can stop its referendum on Sunday
By Fiona Morrison
Guyana has seen Venezuela’s Sunday referendum as an “existential threat” that would allow Venezuela to annex Essequibo; and, as such, had asked the ICJ, also known as the World Court — the highest court of the United Nations (UN) — to impose provisional measures that would ensure some of the referendum’s questions, especially Question Five, to be removed.
This Question Five is tantamount to arrogating the authority for the Venezuelan state to annex Essequibo through Venezuelan votes.
After hearing arguments from both Guyana and Venezuela on the former’s request for protection, at the Court’s seat in The Hague, Netherlands, on Friday, the President of the Court, Judge Joan Donoghue, announced that the Court has decided in favour of Guyana. She therefore read the unanimous orders to the parties, reminding them that decisions issued in accordance with Article 41 of the Court’s statute are binding on all parties, and impose international legal obligations on them. The ICJ’s decisions are final, binding, and without appeal.
“Pending a final decision in the case, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela shall refrain from taking any action which would modify the situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute, whereby the Co-operative Republic of Guyana administers and exercises control over that area,” the first order said.
“All parties shall refrain from taking any action which might aggravate or extend the dispute before the Court, or make it more difficult to resolve,” stated the second order.
The World Court has said that Venezuela’s expressed readiness to take action about the territory in dispute in these proceedings, at any moment following the referendum, demonstrates that there is urgency in the sense that there is a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to Guyana’s plausible right before the Court gives its final decision. It therefore concluded that there is a risk of irreparable prejudice to the right claimed by Guyana in the present proceedings, and it has found that risk plausible.
In its ruling, the ICJ dealt with the fifth question of the referendum, which refers explicitly to “the creation of a Guayana Esequiba State, and for an accelerated plan to be developed for comprehensive attention to be paid to the present and future population of that territory, which would include, among other things, the granting of Venezuelan citizenship and identity cards in conformity with the Geneva Agreement and International Law, consequently incorporating said State on the Venezuelan map.”
The Court observed that Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice (STJ) has confirmed the constitutionality of the questions to be posed in the referendum, and that Venezuela has stated during the oral proceedings that it “will not turn its back on what the people decide in the referendum”. The STJ is known to be severely compromised by the Executive.
Additionally, the Court noted that, on October 24, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro publicly stated that the referendum “is the first time that all arguments: political, diplomatic, legal, historic, territorial, are given to our people so that we take a collective decision as a country.”
Other official statements suggest that Venezuela is taking steps to acquire control over, and administer, the territory in dispute. For instance, on 6 November 2023, the Minister of Defence of Venezuela, General Vladimir Padrino López, appealed to “go to combat” concerning the territory in question. Furthermore, Venezuelan military officials announced that Venezuela is taking concrete measures to build an airstrip to serve as a “logistical support point for the integral development of the Essequibo,” the Court outlined in its ruling.
In light of the strong tension that currently characterises the relations between the two countries, the ICJ noted, the circumstances described above present a serious risk of Venezuela acquiring, and exercising control and administration of, the territory in dispute.
Referendum will go on
However, even in light of the ruling issued by the ICJ, the Venezuelan Government, in a statement on Friday, reiterated that it does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ to settle the territorial controversy surrounding Guayana Esequiba, especially given the existence of the 1966 Geneva Agreement.
“Nothing in international law allowed the Court to interfere in the internal affairs of Venezuela, nor to attempt to prohibit or modify a sovereign act organized within the framework of its participatory political system, and based on its Constitution,” the Venezuelan Government has declared in its statement.
“Likewise, with this decision, it has been demonstrated that Guyana is not a victim, it has no titles over the disputed territory; it is a de facto occupier, and has repeatedly violated the Geneva Agreement and international legality by unilaterally granting concessions in the land territory and the waters pending to be delimited, as well as facilitating its territory for the military deployment in our region of the main warlike power on the planet”, that statement has added.
“Nothing and no one will prevent the Venezuelan people from expressing themselves freely on December 3 on their own internal and extremely important issue, such as territorial integrity.
On December 3, the Venezuelan people will go out to exercise their vote, for the first time in history, to defend their territorial integrity, and will ratify that our rights over Guayana Esequiba are inalienable and unquestionable,” the statement has detailed.
Long-running border controversy
Venezuela maintains that the border with Guyana, a former colony of The Netherlands and the United Kingdom (UK), was fraudulently imposed by the British. Guyana, on the other hand, maintains that the line was conclusively determined on October 3, 1899 — 124 years ago — by an arbitration panel (Arbitral Award of 3 October 1899) .
The Anglo-Venezuelan Arbitral Tribunal met in Paris, France, and on October 3, 1899, gave its “full and final” award defining the border between Venezuela and the then British Guiana. Venezuela accepted the Award and signed on to it. This border was demarcated jointly by Venezuela and the colonial power Britain in 1907.
However, on February 14, 1962, Venezuela informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations that it considered there to be a “dispute” between itself and the UK “concerning the demarcation of the frontier between Venezuela and British Guiana”.
The Government of the UK, for its part, asserted on November 13, 1962 that “the western boundary of British Guiana with Venezuela (had been) finally settled by the award which the arbitral tribunal (had) announced on 3 October 1899”, and that it did not “agree that there (could) be any dispute over the question settled by the award”.
After various attempts to resolve the matter had failed, the representatives of the UK, Venezuela, and British Guiana signed the Geneva Agreement on February 17, 1966. Over Venezuela’s signature, the Agreement refers to the “controversy” raised by Venezuela.
On Feb 17, 1966, just before attaining independence, Guyana became a party to the Geneva Agreement. Attempts were made in the ensuing decades to resolve the dispute through different means of settlement outlined in the Geneva Agreement.
Finally, after no agreement had been reached, as per the procedure adumbrated in the Agreement, Guyana, in January 2018, passed the controversy over to the UN Secretary-General to choose a dispute mechanism as outlined by Art 33 of the UN Charter. He chose the ICJ as the means to resolve the controversy legally.
Oil-rich region
Venezuela heated up the border controversy after American oil giant ExxonMobil found nearly 11 billion barrels of oil off Essequibo in 2015. Crude oil is being produced in the offshore Stabroek block of Guyana by a consortium comprising the Chinese corporation CNOOC Ltd, ExxonMobil, and Hess Corporation.
In the substantive case of 2018, Guyana, among other things, seeks to obtain from the ICJ a final and binding judgement that the 1899 Arbitral Award, which established the location of the land boundary between then-British Guiana and Venezuela, remains valid and binding; and a declaration that Essequibo belongs to Guyana. In the major case, however, a final ruling might not be made for years.
Jurisdiction
The ICJ has already declared that it possesses jurisdiction to determine the border controversy raised by Venezuela. In so doing, it also rejected Venezuela’s argument that the UK should be a party to the case, as Guyana was a British colony in 1899.
Guyana has condemned what it describes as “Venezuela’s sinister plan for seizing Guyanese territory.” Guyana has contended that the singular goal of the referendum is to “obtain responses that would support Venezuela’s decision to abandon” the ICJ proceedings to “formally annex and integrate” Essequibo into Venezuela.
The Venezuelan President has accused the Guyana Government of being a puppet of ExxonMobil and the US Southern Command, and has called on President Dr Irfaan Ali to engage in bilateral discussions with Venezuela, mediated by the Caribbean Community (Caricom), to settle the longstanding border controversy.
The Guyana Government has made it clear that it has no intention of abandoning the legal process that has already begun and engaging Venezuela outside of the court. This position has also been reaffirmed by Guyana’s National Assembly in a unanimous vote last month.
Guyana’s agent to the World Court and Advisor on Borders, Carl Greenidge, has reminded the ICJ that it has already twice affirmed its jurisdiction to mediate the boundary controversy between Guyana and Venezuela. He has said that Venezuela, by its actions, is attempting to pre-empt the court’s ruling and take extra-judicial action; thus, challenging the court’s authority and, by extension, the UN’s ability to ensure a resolution of the matter.
Over the past few weeks, Guyana has been gathering regional and international support against Venezuela’s planned referendum and its illegitimate claim to Essequibo.
In addition, in the past few weeks, Venezuela has been conducting military drills near Guyana’s borders, and has been mobilising more troops. Guyana has also increased its military presence at the border.
Earlier this week, Brazil beefed up its military presence along its northern border as it monitored the territorial dispute between its two neighbours, Guyana and Venezuela.
As a specialised unit of the US Army is currently in Guyana to conduct joint training exercises for the advancement of a military alliance, top brass from the US Army’s 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) have been in talks since Monday. This is especially crucial in light of the border threat that Venezuela poses to Guyana. It is feared that Venezuela’s referendum will threaten the peace, security, and stability of the Region.
The Spanish-speaking nation is under international sanctions due to an unrecognised election and crackdown on anti-government rallies, resulting in socioeconomic and political crises. Hyperinflation, rising rates of sickness, famine, homicide, and death have all been hallmarks of those crises, leading to large-scale emigration from that country.
