GUYANA’S Foreign Secretary, Carl Greenidge, will provide an update on the upcoming International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing on the Guyana/Venezuela controversy today, Saturday, June 13.

Greenidge will be participating in a town hall meeting and panel discussion hosted by the Guyanese American Chamber of Commerce, which will be live-streamed on its Facebook
page @GuyaneseAmericanChamberofCommerce at 16:00 hours.

Just recently, the ICJ set public hearings on the long-awaited Arbitral Award of 1899 (Guyana v. Venezuela) case for June 30, 2020, by video conference. The hearings were initially scheduled for March 23 to 27, 2020 but the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic derailed those plans. The ICJ has since stated that the public hearings will open on June 30, 2020 at 14:00 hours at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the seat of the court. The programme of the hearings will be announced at a later stage.

The hearing will determine whether the court has jurisdiction over the case filed by Guyana on March 29, 2018. Guyana seeks to obtain, from the court, a final and binding judgement that the 1899 Arbitral Award, which established the location of the land boundary between then-British Guiana and Venezuela, remains valid and binding, and that Guyana’s Essequibo region belongs to Guyana, and not Venezuela.

Guyana brought its case to the court following the decision by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in January 2018, that the controversy between Guyana and Venezuela should be decided by the ICJ.