Venezuela’s claim a “figment of the imagination”— Greenidge

…says country making unprecedented claim

With just about two weeks to go before Guyana makes its appearance before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to deal with the issue of jurisdiction over the territorial integrity case, Venezuela’s supposed claim over Essequibo has been described as a “figment of imagination” in the minds of the Bolivarian Government.
These comments were made by Foreign Secretary Carl Greenidge in a Zoom panel discussion that included Private Sector Commission (PSC) Chairman Gerry Gouveia; former United States Ambassador to Guyana, Perry Holloway and Head of the Guyana conglomerate Demerara Distillers Limited, Komal Samaroo, who appeared on the panel discussion in the capacity of Chairman of the West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers Association (WIRSPA)

During the discussion, Greenidge said that Venezuela has never occupied Essequibo before 1648, because it was not in existence. “It never occupied it after 1648: Spain never claimed to have occupied it after 1648, and this is a figment of the imagination of the Venezuelan Administration, post 1840s.”
Greenidge, who previously served as Foreign Affairs Minister until 2019, described it as a unique case whereby a country lays claim to territory over which it never held sovereignty. He noted that Guyana passed from Dutch to British hands without Spain ever establishing sovereignty.
It was only after Venezuela’s independence in the 1820s that the Spanish-speaking country claimed Essequibo. However, an international tribunal ruled in 1899 that the land belonged to Great Britain.
“It is a unique case of a country laying claim to territory over which it never exercised sovereignty. And now you say, because that is a principle on which the country stands, in which you say the Constitution of the country says it can’t sign an agreement ceding territory.”
Meanwhile, Greenidge also expressed hope that the ICJ would rule in a timely manner on its jurisdiction, and it could then move forward to the substantive issues of land territory and the boundaries.
“We don’t know how long they will take. We assume, in keeping with the precedents of other cases considered by the court, this ought to be no longer than a few months. Given when we started, by way of filing our documents, we would hope it wouldn’t take us very far into 2020. But that’s not a decision for us,” he said.
The ICJ had announced last month that it would begin hearing the jurisdiction case in the Guyana-Venezuela controversy on June 30. According to the court, it will begin with oral hearings on the question of the Court’s jurisdiction in the case focused the Arbitral Award of October 3, 1899, concerning Guyana and Venezuela.

The hearings
The hearings are scheduled to commence at 14:00h and would be conducted via videoconference. This virtual hearing is as a result of the ongoing restrictions the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The ICJ had postponed the long-anticipated hearing of the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy case that was scheduled to begin on March 23, 2020, citing the coronavirus pandemic. In a previous notice, ICJ had informed the parties of the schedules for the upcoming public hearings to determine whether the Court has jurisdiction to preside over the matter.
Guyana filed its case with the World Court on March 29, 2018, seeking a final and binding judgment that the 1899 Arbitral Award, which established the location of the land boundary between the then British Guiana and Venezuela, remains valid and binding, and that Guyana’s Essequibo region belongs to Guyana, and not Venezuela as is being claimed by the Spanish-speaking country.
Guyana moved to the World Court after exhausting all means of negotiation with Venezuela. 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.
However, Venezuela had claimed, in a letter to the World Court, that the Secretary General exceeded his authority under the Geneva Agreement, and, therefore, the Court lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate the lawsuit filed by Guyana.
The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the UN. It 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-authorised UN organs and agencies of the system.