By Svetlana Marshall
THE Government of Guyana has set aside $200M to retain international consultants in its quest to build a strong case against Venezuela in anticipation that the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy receives the attention of the International Court of Justice. It was the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Chief Whip and Former Foreign Affairs Minister Gail Teixeira who had enquired about the $200M which was affixed to the Line Item 6284 (Other) Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Development of Foreign Policy.
The PPP/C Member of Parliament had pointed out that in 2014 approximately $30M was allocated under the Line Item but by 2015 it had jumped to $166.6M. However, only $76.4M was utilised. As result, she queried why $200M was being allocated this time around.
In response, Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge explained that: “The increase here is determined almost exclusively by the cost of retaining international lawyers to assist us in this exercise…together with the need to also retain lawyers and advisors locally. In September 2015, President David Granger had urged the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to use his office to send Venezuela’s case for a final, legal settlement at the International Court of Justice. Venezuela has claimed that the 1899 arbitral award which defined the two countries’ borders is null and void. The claim was raised 50 years ago on the eve of Guyana’s independence from Great Britain. An agreement signed in Geneva in 1966 provides for the Secretary-General to take action to bring a resolution to the contention by Venezuela.
“Guyana has the fullest confidence in the judgment and capacity of the United Nations, through the Office of the Secretary-General, to identify solutions that will validate the ‘just, perfect and final’ nature of the award,” Granger had stated.
Just last week, the Foreign Affairs Minister had told the National Assembly that although the UN Secretary-General has had discussions with both Guyana and Venezuela, and has made proposals for “The Way Forward,” Venezuela seems prepared to derail the process. He had made that statement in the House after being informed that on February 4, Venezuela’s Minister of People’s Power for External Relations Delcy Rodriguez had declared that “Venezuela will deliver the country’s formal accusation, observations and proposals to the documents presented on the territorial controversy…we reaffirm the legitimate rights of Venezuela over the Essequibo Territory…”
At the time, Rodriguez was speaking to the Director of the General Secretariat of the United Nations Edmund Mulet at the UN Headquarters in New York.
But Greenidge stated clearly that Guyana will continue to reject the “backhanded” attempts to despoil its rights. “That statement is yet another example of Venezuela’s time-worn belief that falsehoods repeated often enough may eventually lose their basic falsity. They do not. Venezuela has no ‘rights over the Essequibo’,” Minister Greenidge told the House.
Guyana’s rights over the Essequibo were settled by the Award of 1899 of the international Tribunal of Arbitration established under the Treaty of Washington. At the time, the then Government of Venezuela undertook to accept the award as “a full, perfect and final settlement.”
Venezuela did accept the decision – jointly with the United Kingdom – demarcating the boundary on the ground and drawing up a definitive map depicting the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela identifying the Essequibo as being within British Guiana -in accordance with the 1899 Arbitral Award.
But, according to Minister Greenidge, there were always elements in Venezuela who were bent on pushing the notion that the 1899 Arbitral Award was “null and void.”
“Britain resisted them; their final rejection being the Geneva Agreement of 1966 which acknowledged that Guyana would be free, and ensured that Venezuela could not pursue its “nullity” contention against the new state, save in specified ways starting with a Mixed Commission and empowering the United Nations Secretary-General to bring the contention to finality by judicial settlement, consonant with the Charter of the United Nations.”
But from the outset, Venezuela delayed pursuing their nullity contention; pursuing instead a policy of harassment of the new state, impeding its development by threatening investors, Minister Greenidge pointed out.
He added: “It kept Guyana out of the OAS for 25 years. Contemptuous of international law, it has issued decrees asserting maritime claims progressively more and more outrageous. And it remains one of the few countries of the world to have excluded itself from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”
The Foreign Affairs Minister strongly believes that Venezuela’s behaviour towards Guyana is a festering wound to peace and development in the Region and an affront to the rule of law in the world.