Dear Editor,
I refer you to last Saturday’s newspapers’ (KN and SN of 19th December 2020) reports on the ICJ decision on the 1899 Arbitral Award read by Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, President of the World Court. A few points of accuracy arise although some of the information is available on the ICJ website and others have been clarified in the past for the Press.
I was reported (SN 19th Dec, Final border controversy judgment could take close to a decade, page 2) as saying that completion of the case is likely to take nine or more years. Guyana would certainly not want to give the Court the impression that we would expect the exercise to take such an inordinately long time or that we would be comfortable with such a delay, especially if the other party does not participate in the hearings. Contrary to the newspaper report, I do not think that the second leg of the ICJ exercise should take more than two to three and a half years! Only Wednesday last, in the course of a presentation on, ‘A public Discourse on the Guyana-Venezuela Controversy’, I shared a listing of the 20 or so ICJ cases on territorial disputes since 2000. The average time between the lodging of the complaint and the decision by the Court was 4.9 years. As might be expected, the actual time taken is a function of the complexity of the case and, of course, whether or not it is contested. Guyana’s application was filed on March 29, 2018. On the foregoing basis alone, there is no reason to expect another decade of deliberations or pleadings. It is true that some cases have taken as long as nine years to be completed however, Guyana is not at the commencement of the process. We are already two and a half years into it.
What we now know is that the case management will take place on January 15 2021 and that the Court will then decide on the time to be allocated for the different elements of the hearing – presentation by the two sides and responses then deliberation by the judges. None of these elements could take a year each and if Venezuela continues to abstain from participation at least two elements will be suppressed.
Saturday’s and subsequent reports on the case reflect a degree of confusion about the designation and roles of key players and entities in this exercise and this may fuel further ill-informed controversy about use of available local expertise and the competencies. In that respect, it should be noted that the Dec 18 hearing and the ICJ hearings to follow are part of a multi-stage political and diplomatic as well as legal process. Guyana’s teams for which the Agent is responsible reflects this multi-disciplinary reality. The effort to definitively resolve the controversy was set in train in 2015 at the meeting between Presidents Granger and Maduro with Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. The latter first called for a last effort at ‘dialogue’ between the two states. Following preliminary exchanges the Guyana and Venezuela Governments agreed, with different degrees of enthusiasm, to the SG’s concrete proposal, termed ‘enhanced mediation’ under the aegis of the SG’s Personal Representative, Amb. Dag Nylander. When in 2016 the Cabinet decided to field a team to pursue that initiative, Guyana established a multi-disciplinary, multi-sector, multi-national team, called the Advisory Committee (AC), to undertake the necessary preparation and representation. Only Guyana’s ‘successful’ navigation of the hazards posed by this process over the two subsequent years ensured that the matter would reach the Court. That was, in other words, the single most important step in the entire process to date. Within that AC, most of that work was carried out by our MoFA team of Diplomats, experienced former negotiators supported by some six largely young MoFA lawyers and our Maritime Consultant as well as Prof Philippe Sands Q.C. and especially Prof Payam Akhavan from the International team of Lawyers. In 2018, the 2015/6 Advisory Committee (AC) in order to deal with the June 30 Hearing of the ICJ was reinforced with the full team of international lawyers including, French jurist Prof Pellet and a Judge Ad Hoc, Ms Charlesworth Prof., to take into account the peculiarities, including, language and cultural make-up of the Court. The lawyers are part of our national team and the lodging of the memorial and discussions of the case with the Registrar involved both lawyers and other representatives and were led by me. Guyana’s Agent to the ICJ is Carl B. Greenidge. Both SN and KN prefer to designate me as the Co-Agent, notwithstanding attempts to have this corrected. The Agent is not required to be a lawyer and is responsible for overseeing the preparations, finalizing strategy, liaising with the Government to ensure that it is informed of the needs for successful prosecution of the process and ensuring that the AC is familiar with Government policy, for example.
Sir Shridath Ramphal S.C, as one of the two Co-Agents, is responsible for coordinating the inputs of the legal counsel and advocates. Sir Shridath is a phenomenon in his own right, he is an author and has been an acknowledged practitioner in the fields of law and diplomacy. I should not need to remind readers that Sir Shridath, like former Foreign Minister Rashleigh Jackson, in addition to being internationally renowned as a negotiator, brings unique first-hand experience of the specific technicalities, policies and events surrounding negotiation of the Geneva Agreement and the deliberations of the related Mixed Commission which are so central to the Court case. The liaison with the team of international lawyers has been Amb Harper A.A, now P.S. of the MoFA.
The international legal team includes two firms, which successfully fought on Guyana’s behalf (actually CGX’s!) the UNCLOS Arbitration case with Suriname, also includes a young overseas-based, female Guyanese attorney. The other members are advocates who have participated in many of the ICJ’s landmark cases relating to boundary disputes in particular. Two of those counsel, who are also leading law Professors in world class Universities and Institutes, have the unusual distinction of being best-selling authors of non-fiction books on international law and the World Court.
The other Co-Agent is Amb Audrey Waddell, CCH., former D.G. of the MoFA, who has been coordinating the domestic team which includes Cedric Joseph, CCH, Ambassador, professional historian and author of seminal publications on the Controversy, relevant Ambassadors such as former national and regional negotiators including Dr Barton Scotland, CCH, S.C, Prof Pollard and Amb Rudy Collins, CCH. Attorney Mr. Ralph Ramkarran S.C, has been drawn from the private sector, inter alia and, from the political stakeholders, we have Ms. Gail Teixeira M.P., representing the PPP/C. Mr Ramkarran, I should not need to remind any Guyanese, was like Dr Scotland, a Facilitator of the Good Offices Process which preceded the Enhanced Mediation phase and he is a former Speaker of the House and Senior Partner of a leading local law firm. Mr Ramkarran’s participation in the AC pre-dated his designation as Adviser on Borders.
I close by referring you to the KN report (Saturday December 19th, 2020 page 3 & 12, “World Court rules it has jurisdiction to hear Guyana-Venezuela border case”) which referred to members of the AC as part of ‘ a contingent of local dignitaries’. I hope that I have demonstrated that the persons in question were not mere spectators to the reading of the historic decision, they were an integral part of the process. Hopefully, this brief insight will help to ensure more accurate and appropriate reporting on the AC, its members and their manner of contribution to Guyana’s struggle to secure its sovereignty over its entire territory.
Yours faithfully,
Carl B. Greenidge, Guyana Agent to
ICJ 23/xii/22
