The International Court of Justice (ICJ) may possibly rule on the border controversy case between Guyana and Venezuela by the end of 2023, according to Guyana’s Agent Carl Greenidge.
“The court has given us a date by which Guyana must present its memorial. That date is March 7th of 2022. In the case of Venezuela, it has to do it a year later; that is March, 2023,” Greenidge yesterday told a press briefing, having noted that the court has already satisfied itself that it has jurisdiction over the matter.
Even if Venezuela doesn’t make a submission, the Court is expected to still make a ruling but that would not come until possibly at the end of 2023 at earliest by Greenidge’s approximation.
“The court will then give itself time to complete that exercise in reflecting on what has been presented to it, asking questions, satisfying itself and then giving a decision,” he said while observing that on the last occasion the ICJ took nine months to complete its determination and in a recent case it took seven months.
He informed that there have been some changes and that some members of Guyana’s legal team are no longer a part of the process but stressed that it will in no way hinder the completion of the country’s submissions. “There have been changes in the legal team and elsewhere but that happens normally,” he said. All of the international legal representatives are still a part of the process.
Guyana’s Agent informed that “a few days ago” a meeting was held and said that this country’s local technical and advisory officers are working fervently and meet regularly to discuss the case.
“Whilst we are moving toward March 2022, it is the responsibility of the Government of Guyana to ensure that its submissions are consistent with the defence of the case that we are making. In other words, we are working on a presentation that says to the court: this agreement that Guyana signed and Venezuela signed, and Britain signed in 1899 and which was supposed to be by the 1897 Washington accord, this agreement remains binding, full and perfect—binding on all the parties that signed the agreement,” he said.
While Venezuela was a part of the case management process, its Vice President Delcy Rodríguez had told the ICJ that her country’s participation was “as a courtesy, not as a party in this procedure.”
Venezuela had reiterated its historical position of non-recognition of the jurisdiction of the Court to hear the case and highlighted the validity of the 1966 Geneva Agreement to reach a practical and mutually satisfactory settlement for the parties, through friendly negotiations.
Despite the ruling by the ICJ that it had jurisdiction to hear the case, Venezuela has taken the position that there is no basis of jurisdiction for this case since it has never given its consent.
According to Venezuela, Guyana approaching the ICJ “damages the meaning, purpose and reason of the Geneva Agreement.”
Further, according to Venezuela, the matter is being pursued with “unjustified haste” when the world is currently facing “the most serious pandemic in more than a century.”
For Greenidge, Venezuela’s arguments are circular in nature.
“They agree to resolve the problem by adhering to the Geneva Agreement and then they interpret that agreement to mean the solution must be amicable and agreeable to Venezuela. The Geneva Agreement granted the Secretary General the power to choose the Court and he has chosen the Court. You can’t now want to go beyond the ICJ,” he has explained.
This position has so far been supported by the Court, which concluded on December 18, 2020 that not only could it determine the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Award on the frontier between Guyana and Venezuela but that it could address the related question of the definitive settlement of the land boundary controversy between the two territories.
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.
Specifically, the Court, by a majority of 12 votes to four, found that “by conferring on the Secretary-General [via the Geneva Agreement] the authority to choose the appropriate means of settlement of their controversy, including the possibility of recourse to judicial settlement by the International Court of Justice, Guyana and Venezuela consented to its jurisdiction.”
In March 2018, Guyana filed its application with the ICJ to confirm the validity and binding effect of the Arbitral Award of 1899 on the boundary between the two countries and the subsequent 1905 agreement, following the decision by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to choose the ICJ as the next means of resolving the controversy which stems from Venezuela’s contention that the award was null and void.
