ICJ assumes jurisdiction in border controversy case

By Thandeka Percival On In Guyana News |
The ICJ courtroom at the Peace Palace in The Hague (Netherlands), where the ruling on the court’s jurisdiction to hear Guyana’s case seeking the validation of the 1899 arbitral award establishing the boundary with Venezuela was delivered yesterday. (UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.)
The ICJ courtroom at the Peace Palace in The Hague (Netherlands), where the ruling on the court’s jurisdiction to hear Guyana’s case seeking the validation of the 1899 arbitral award establishing the boundary with Venezuela was delivered yesterday. (UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.)

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) yesterday ruled that it has jurisdiction to determine the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Award on the frontier between Guyana and Venezuela in what is seen as a major victory for this country in its bid to definitively settle a decades-old controversy.

The Court – the principal judicial organ of the United Nations – also declared that it could address the related question of the definitive settlement of the land boundary controversy between the two territories.  No schedule has been fixed by the court for the hearing of the substantive case.

The decision, which was delivered by the President of the ICJ, Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, is based on the text, the object and purpose of the February 17th 1966 Geneva Agreement, which aimed to address the controversy over the award, as well as the circumstances surrounding the agreement’s conclusion.