By Neville J. Bissember
It was Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister during the nineteenth Century, who had famously said, “We have no permanent friend. We have no permanent enemies. We just have permanent interests”. Poor ole chap, coming as he did from a small island off the coast of Europe, he could be excused for so doing, because we folk from the mainland know only too well that neighbouring states are permanent as well.
In our case, we are constantly reminded of this stark reality by our neighbours to the West and East, both of whom would like to increase their square mileage by reducing ours. And, as if we need further reminding, the mighty Atlantic perennially pounds us from the North, more intense of recent as a result of the climate change chickens coming home to roost, through sea level rise and more severe rainfall.
History has taught us that the use of force, to use the strict international law term, is often spawned out of a nationalistic fervour to acquire either more land, or natural resources, or both. While the threat from the west has generally been more pronounced and challenging – Caracas wants a chunk of land, five eights of our geographic space to be precise, along with whatever minerals come therewith – that from the east could be regarded as more complex, if only for the simple reason that it has in the past manifested itself in three separate but not unrelated ways – off the Atlantic coast, in the Corentyne river, and in the New River Triangle.
Thankfully, after a jingoistic show of force in 2000 that may have been precipitated by a misreading here of the signals emanating from Paramaribo, especially as it was in a pre-election period, the maritime delimitation issue off the Corentyne coast was finally determined by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in 2007. It should not be lost on anyone on this side of the border that many of the recent discoveries which have catapulted Guyana into the global limelight of oil-resourced nations are to be found just west of the internationally imposed line of delimitation, that is, in the very space that Suriname had coveted in 2000. One wonders how more interesting would have been the relations between Guyana and Suriname, absent a role for ITLOS.
From our history, it should be recalled that the effectuation of an agreement reached by Britain and The Netherlands in 1936 was scuttled by the onset of World War II. That agreement addressed the border demarcating the New River Triangle, which was to remain part of the territory of then British Guiana, as well as the jurisdictional status of the Corentyne river – with the important caveat that Suriname’s control of the river was always subject to internationally recognized rights of user of the residents of the western river bank, to traverse the waterway, fish and to carry on commerce and trading activities essential to their livelihoods. The reconfirmation of the status of the New River Triangle remains a classic legacy of colonialism.
However regarding the Corentyne waterway, it is indeed unfortunate that we have now arrived at a situation where one party has to issue licences for the nationals of the other party to fish in the waters of the former. A distinction ought to be made between commercial or industrial fishing which takes place on a larger scale, which in the past was heavily exploited by vessels from as far away as South Korea, and small-scale artisanal fishing which Guyanese are more involved in closer to the shore, or in the Corentyne river. As stated above, it is internationally recognized that in border rivers, residents on the riparian states enjoy the normal right of user. At the very least, if, for regulatory or revenue purposes, Suriname were to make a cogent case for such licences to be issued, then they should be issued to Guyanese fisherfolk as of right, in a reasonable period of time and without undue delay and jumping through bureaucratic hoops. Instead of shouting across the border at each other, hurling insults and allegations against government officials, or threatening to retaliate against Surinamese businesses in Guyana, which are here exercising the right of establishment under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, the need for a “softer softer”, more diplomatic approach is critical. I recall vividly as a young diplomat in the Guyana Foreign Service the sage counsel of the late former Minister Mr. Rashleigh Jackson, of the need to always maintain cordial and correct, if not friendly relations, with one’s Venezuelan counterparts. This would facilitate an effortless and accommodating response to a demarche, were the relations ever to hit a speed bump, as is sometimes the case with territorial issues.
Indeed I am sure one of his successors Mr. Clement Rohee would recall how I put this advice to good use many years ago when I accompanied him to Cairo for a meeting of Non Aligned Foreign Ministers; there, the presence of a Venezuelan colleague of mine who had previously served in their Consulate here in Georgetown, made for expeditious and cordial agreement on the inclusion in the final Political Declaration of a paragraph on the Guyana-Venezuela controversy which I had walked with in my back pocket.
It is said that a diplomat is someone who would tell you to go to hell and you would look forward to getting there. Young diplomats are often told the anecdote of a garrulous Ambassador who stalked the corridors of multilateral diplomacy and habitually took the floor to launch into meandering and longwinded presentations, much to the discomfort of many. On one such occasion, the next speaker took the floor, thanked the Chairman and colleagues for the conduct of the meeting and then, referring to the previous speaker, declared that, like him, he too had nothing new to add! Thereafter the noisy diplomat got the message.
Regarding Guyana-Suriname relations, I had put Mr. Jackson’s advice to good use when serving as Co-Secretary of the Guyana-Suriname Boundary Commission, striking up an excellent relationship with my counterpart Ambassador Robby Ramlakhan, both in and out of the conference room. That facilitated the dismantling of preliminary hurdles of both an administrative or technical nature in the pre-negotiation phase, and contributed to incremental advances in the relations between our two countries. Incidentally, in a March 2006 publication of the Guyana Journal, I noticed that the late Dr. Odeen Ishmael attempted to rewrite history, by stating that “in spite of several initiatives from Guyana, the meetings of the Commissions were not held”. In fact two such were held, one in Suriname and the second in Guyana, with Mr. Ralph Ramkarran serving as Co-Chair on the Guyana side.
It would appear that relations have run off the track, hopefully temporarily. When an Ambassador is summoned to the Foreign Ministry, it is not for a back-slapping session and to enquire after the family and how he had passed the weekend. More recently, there was surprise when President Ali’s counterpart and “padnah” turned up in Nickerie to announce the legalisation of the backtrack border crossing there, with neither information in advance being provided to the public, nor an input nor participation from the western shores of the Corentyne. So what then is the prevailing situation? If you depart Guyana for Suriname using the overland route from a place other than Moleson Creek you would have left illegally, but your arrival at Nickerie would now be legal and recorded? By analogy, it is hard to imagine a situation where the people in the front house would allow persons to pass under the bottom house to access a standpipe in the street behind, without informing their neighbours in the back house.
There has also been talk of writing to CARICOM, as the bilateral track has become exasperating. It is submitted that the timing and propriety of moving a negotiation from the bilateral to a third-party intervention is vital to the future continuation of those discussions.
There could certainly be a role to be played by the Secretary General of CARICOM, except that the Revised Treaty provides for the Good Offices role of the SG to be exercised by parties to a dispute ‘concerning the interpretation and application of the Treaty’. Such resort to the third-party modality must also be by agreement of the parties. Indeed we could even be faced with a similar spectacle as occurred last February when the UN Security Council was debating the situation in the Ukraine and the meeting was chaired by the Russian Ambassador, as Suriname currently is in the Chair of the integration movement until December.
It is for this reason that the better rule of thumb for states which share borders is “Love Thy Neighbour”, rather than what Mr. Disraeli had to say about permanent interests; neighbours, not unlike interests, are also permanent. The question which remains is how to return things to that status of correctness and cordiality that is more conducive to good neighbourly relations.
Two suggestions come readily to mind: one would be the immediate revival of the dialogue and information-sharing channel that was provided in the past by the Guyana-Suriname Boundary Commission, appropriately skilled and resourced on both sides of the border. Second, with the agreement of both sides, a high-level Commission could be constituted, with technical support from archivists, lawyers, historians, geographers, cartographers, surveyors and the like, to return to a structured revisiting of the pre-independence work initiated by the two colonial powers, with a view to effecting the agreements which had been reached almost a century ago, but unfortunately never consummated.
Possible names for consideration could be: The Most Hon. Mr. Percival J. Patterson, former Prime Minister of Jamaica, who often over the years has administered the glue that has caused the Community to stick together; Baroness Rosalyn Higgins KC, former Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics, former Judge and President of the International Court of justice; Sir David Simmons K.C, former Chief Justice of Barbados, whose fingerprints are on many of the original constituent documents which bind us together; H.E. Mr. Justice Anthony Carmona SC, former President of Trinidad and Tobago and Judge of the International Criminal Court; and Dr. Kathy-Ann Brown, Member of the ITLOS and Deputy Solicitor General for International Affairs of Jamaica.