The In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) Fri­day ruled that Venezuela must not take any ac­tion to seize the min­er­al and for­est-rich coun­ty of Es­se­qui­bo in Guyana based on its up­com­ing De­cem­ber 3 ref­er­en­dum.

Both Guyana and Venezuela had made pre­sen­ta­tions to the ICJ dur­ing two-days of hear­ing ear­li­er this month in­to the case re­lat­ing to the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Award af­ter Guyana, in its re­quest, had said that the Venezuela gov­ern­ment, through its Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil had pub­lished a list of five ques­tions that it in­tends to put be­fore the peo­ple of Venezuela in a “Con­sul­ta­tive Ref­er­en­dum” on Sun­day.

In its rul­ing, the ICJ is­sued a num­ber of pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures that “unan­i­mous­ly pend­ing a fi­nal de­ci­sion in the case, the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela shall re­frain from tak­ing any ac­tion, which would mod­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion that cur­rent­ly pre­vails in the ter­ri­to­ry in dis­pute, where­by the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana ad­min­is­ters and ex­er­cis­es con­trol over that area.”

The ICJ said al­so that “unan­i­mous­ly both par­ties shall re­frain from any ac­tion which might ag­gra­vate or ex­tend the dis­pute be­fore the court or make it more dif­fi­cult to re­solve.

“The court em­pha­sizes that the ques­tion of the va­lid­i­ty of the 1899 Award and the re­lat­ed ques­tion of the de­fin­i­tive set­tle­ment of the land bound­ary dis­pute be­tween Guyana and Venezuela are mat­ters for the court to de­cide at the mer­its stage.

“The court re­calls that Guyana has re­quest­ed to in­di­cate mea­sures aimed at en­sur­ing the non-ag­gra­va­tion of the dis­pute with Venezuela when in­di­cat­ing pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures for the pur­pose of re­serv­ing spe­cif­ic rights.”

Guyana had ap­plied to the ICJ in 2018 to have the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Award, which es­tab­lished the bor­der be­tween Venezuela and the then-British Guiana, con­firmed as legal­ly en­force­able. The 1899 rul­ing was like­wise cit­ed in this ap­pli­ca­tion as a ‘full, per­fect, and fi­nal set­tle­ment’ of all is­sues per­tain­ing to draw­ing the bor­ders be­tween Venezuela and the British Guiana province.

Dur­ing the ICJ sit­ting ear­li­er this month, Venezuela vowed to go ahead with its ref­er­en­dum as it seeks to gain own­er­ship of the Es­se­qui­bo in Guyana.

“The ref­er­en­dum is an in­ter­nal do­mes­tic mat­ter and is not meant in any way to re­sult. in the an­nex­a­tion of the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry,” In­ter­na­tion­al Law Pro­fes­sor Makane Moïse Mbengue told the ICJ.

The 15-mem­ber CARI­COM group­ing, the Lon­don-based Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at and the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) have al­so re­ject­ed the ref­er­en­dum stat­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al law strict­ly pro­hibits the Gov­ern­ment of one State from uni­lat­er­al­ly seiz­ing, an­nex­ing or in­cor­po­rat­ing the ter­ri­to­ry of an­oth­er state and not­ed that the ref­er­en­dum will open the door to the pos­si­ble vi­o­la­tion of this fun­da­men­tal tenet of in­ter­na­tion­al law.

THE HAGUE, Dec 1, CMC – 

CMC/gt/ir/2023