It is good that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued an official statement on the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Agreement on February 17. Indeed, this and the reflections and analyses to which we have recently been treated in the media by former senior diplomats, such as Sir Shridath Ramphal, Ronald Austin and Cedric Joseph, are an important element of what must be regarded as a vital public education campaign, separate and apart from our diplomatic outreach to Caricom and the international community. Guyanese at home and abroad must be kept fully sensitised to Venezuela’s spurious claim to our Essequibo region and our maritime area.
As we all know, Venezuela’s designs on our territory, recently given new life by President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are based on that country’s contention that the Arbitral Award of 1899 establishing the border between British Guiana and Venezuela is “null and void”. As we have been reminded, the Geneva Agreement, signed by representatives of the then colonial power, the UK, and Venezuela, in the presence of Premier Forbes Burnham and Mr Ramphal just a few months before our Independence, was intended to resolve the controversy. As has been made clear, the conference and agreement in Geneva were absolutely necessary in light of the existential threat posed by Venezuela to the independent Guyanese state that was about to be proclaimed. And, as Sir Shridath has stated, the Geneva Agreement was “the only available option of resolving peacefully the conflict of Venezuela’s outrageous claims”.
The main instrument of the Agreement was the four-year mixed commission, established to seek “satisfactory solutions for the practical settlement of the controversy”. Mr Joseph has pointed out in his book, Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Re-opening of the Guyana Venezuela Border Controversy, 1961-1966, that Mr Burnham maintained that the language of the Agreement “did not admit to ambiguity”. Indeed, nowhere in the Agreement does it even suggest that the 1899 Arbitral Award had been nullified. Unfortunately, as Mr Joseph has explained, “the phrase ‘practical settlement’ resisted common interpretation and ultimately crippled the work of the mixed commission.”
From what we can glean, the negotiations in Geneva were conducted in good faith, at least by the British and the Guyanese delegations. It was only afterwards, however, that it became evident that Venezuela’s territorial ambitions – originally stoked by American fears of Dr Cheddi Jagan’s communist sympathies and against the backdrop of the Cold War and the diminution of British influence in the Americas – were unappeasable and that Venezuela would maintain a position of intransigence that continues to this day.
It is a matter of record that, even as the mixed commission was meeting in October 1966, Venezuela violated the Geneva Agreement by seizing the eastern, Guyanese half of Ankoko Island situated at the confluence of the Cuyuni and Wenamu Rivers, part of the internationally recognised boundary between Guyana and Venezuela, and has remained in illegal occupation ever since.
Venezuelan aggression, military, economic and diplomatic – if the term ‘diplomatic aggression’ is not an oxymoron – would, moreover, be maintained over the succeeding 50 years, waxing and waning to some extent, depending on the domestic political situation in that country. Currently, it is hardly surprising that the Maduro government would want to distract citizens from their dire social and economic woes, egged on by an opposition eager to use any weapon with which to attack the government, with a revival of the unsubstantiated claim to Essequibo. But Venezuela’s un-neighbourly and unfriendly attitude is unwarranted and unacceptable.
Mr Austin has noted that this posture has been “costly and damaging to Guyana, as major investments in the Essequibo have been stymied.” Former Foreign Minister Rudy Insanally, in his autobiographical Dancing between the Raindrops, termed the controversy “an albatross around our nation’s neck”. President David Granger has likened it to “a monkey on our back”. Whatever the animal, whatever the metaphor, the Venezuelan claim and hostility continue to threaten our independence and are an unjust burden this country has endured for far too long.
The fact remains that Venezuela has been unable, for 50 years, to put forward any compelling legal argument that the 1899 Award is “null and void”. The Guyana government is therefore intent on having the matter settled by the highest international tribunal, the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Sir Shridath, who led Guyana’s case in the maritime border dispute with Suriname in 2007, has said, “It is a bold and courageous thing to do, but we are so confident that justice is on the side of Guyana that it is the proper thing to do.”
President Granger is meeting today with the UN Secretary General. The ball is now in the latter’s court. The Geneva Agreement and the UN Charter allow him to refer the matter to the ICJ. He should let the rule of international law prevail.
