International Court of Justice rules it has jurisdiction in Guyana-Venezuela border dispute

International Court of Justice rules it has jurisdiction in Guyana-Venezuela border dispute

Resolution of the dispute may ultimately determine who has rights vested with respect to offshore oil and gas fields

The United Nation's International Court of Justice ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear a decade-old dispute between Guyana and Venezuela over the demarcation of their land border. This may ultimately determine who has rights vested with respect to offshore oil and gas fields.

The dispute with respect to the border first began in the year 1899 when an arbitration award by an International Tribunal demarcated borders between the two South American nations. Later the arbitration award was rejected by Venezuela which stated that a 1966 agreement nullified original arbitration. The matter was then taken up by the International Court of Justice in the 2018.

For several years, the eastern region, which nearly comprises of about 40 per cent of modern-day Guyana, has been mentioned on Venezuelan maps as a 'reclamation zone' and denoted with diagonal lines.

Venezuela's government had argued that the World Court had no jurisdiction and refused to participate in legal arguments on the issue held earlier in 2020, as it preferred to have a direct conversation with Guyana over its claims to a huge, sparsely populated area west of the Essequibo River.

However, by a 12:4 decision, judges at the United Nation's International Court of Justice, asserted that they have jurisdiction to hear a suit brought by Guyana claiming that the border was established by an 1899 arbitration between Venezuela and the then-colony of British Guiana.

The United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council elected five judges to serve at the World Court for a term of nine-year, United Nation General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir declared after the completion of the vote count. All the five candidates have obtained an absolute majority in both bodies i.e., United Nation General Assembly and the Security Council, Bozkir stated. It was on these judges to settle the decade-long dispute stirring the region.

With respect to its jurisdiction ratione temporis, the Court noted that the scope of the dispute that the Parties agreed to settle through the mechanism laid out in Articles I to IV of the Geneva Agreement was circumscribed by Article I thereof, which referred to "the controversy which has arisen as the result of the Venezuelan contention that the Arbitral Award of 1899, is null and void".

In light of the foregoing, the President of the ICJ, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, commenting on the matter stated, "the Court concludes that it has jurisdiction to entertain Guyana's claims concerning the validity of the 1899 award about the frontier between British Guiana and Venezuela and corresponding related question of the definitive settlement of the land boundary dispute between the territory of the parties."