A delegation from the Falkland Islands flew into Guyana last week seeking support for the islanders’ right to self-determination in the face of Argentina’s insistent claim to sovereignty over the British overseas territory. In a recent referendum the Falklanders were almost unanimous in voting for political arrangements to remain as they are, but the vote has done nothing to mute Argentina’s stridency in asserting what it alleges are its ‘rights’ to the islands.
Now one might have thought that of all the nations in this hemisphere Guyana would have lent the islanders a sympathetic ear − but no. “From our own experience with border issues,” warbled Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett from afar, “we know that the countries should sit down and talk it out to try to find a solution.” Since she appears to have declined to meet the representatives, they had to content themselves with making their case to the government’s official spokesperson on more-or-less everything, namely, Ms Gail Teixeira.
Exactly what Ms Teixeira told member of the Falklands Legislative Assembly Mr Mike Summers and his associate was not reported, but one presumes it chimed harmoniously with the Foreign Minister’s comments. On Friday we quoted the latter as saying: “We support the UN resolution on this matter…”
The UN resolution, it might be noted, was passed in 1964, at a period when the Falklands Islands were regarded as a “colonial question”, with all that that implies. The resolution required the UK and Argentina to begin negotiations to find a peaceful solution to the sovereignty question, “bearing in mind the provisions and objectives of the Charter of the United Nations and of General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) and the interests of the population of the Falkland Islands (Malvinas).”
The UN Charter makes reference to the self-determination of peoples, while General Assembly resolution 1514, its anti-colonial genesis notwithstanding, includes the following article: “All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” It is worth remarking that Argentina is already in breach of the Charter’s requirement of the peaceful settlement of disputes by her resort to arms in a futile attempt to seize the islands by force in 1982.
While it has always been clear that the islanders wanted to stay British, the recent referendum witnessed by overseas elections observers, including some from South America, is incontrovertible evidence of the wishes of the Falklands inhabitants. President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was reported as responding recently that it had no impact on the legal position. Thereafter she took herself off to Rome, barely a week after the installation of the new pontiff, who is widely believed to have expressed support for Argentina’s claim when he was a cardinal in Buenos Aires. It might be observed that what Pope Francis said when he was a cardinal, he could not possibly repeat in his current position, and neither, it might be added, should he involve himself in the issue at any level – not even to press for dialogue, which was what Mrs Kirchner was reported as asking him to do.
What the referendum has done is cut the ground from beneath the Argentine President’s feet; to ignore it is to contravene the spirit of the UN Charter, and the terms of General Assembly Resolution 1514, among others. The right of peoples to self-determination and to decide their own political status is recognised in principle by all democracies, so why so many countries on this continent should have a blind spot where the Falklands is concerned, is a conundrum of sorts. It constitutes a declaration that people don’t count.
It is not as if either that Argentina has an unassailable case in respect of the islands; far from it in fact. However, the precise historical details are less important than the fact that British people settled there beginning in 1833, and nearly two hundred years later, their descendants are still there.
Whatever the Latin countries have chosen to do, Guyana should not be behaving as part of the pack. Quite apart from the principle at issue, we have a kind of vested interest in the matter. How can Ms Rodrigues-Birkett be talking so glibly that from our experience we know that countries should sit down and talk? Our talks with Venezuela, to which she is obliquely referring, are not discussions about sovereignty; that matter found a full, final and perfect settlement in 1899 and there has never been even the hint of a suggestion that this does not still represent the position of the Government of Guyana. By a similar (although not identical) token, there should be no negotiations about sovereignty in the case of the Falkland Islands; if nothing else there can be no doubt now that the people have spoken. It is time that the Government of Guyana listened to them.
