The United Nations Organization today exhausted its management of good offices between Venezuela and Guyana to resolve the border dispute over the Essequibo region and entrusted the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
After a mediation that began 28 years ago, the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, left the solution of the dispute between both countries in the hands of the Inter-American Court of Justice (CIJ).
Guterres thus followed the route proposed by his predecessor, Ban Ki-moon, who announced in December 2016 that if at the end of the following year a “significant advance” was not achieved to resolve the dispute, the case would be brought before the ICJ.
“The secretary general has carefully analyzed what happened in the course of 2017 in the good offices process and has reached the conclusion that no significant progress has been made,” said the spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, in a statement.
As a result, and following the recommendation made by the former Secretary General, Guterres “has chosen the International Court of Justice as the means to be used for the resolution of the dispute.”
However, he left the doors open so that both countries “can benefit from continuity in the good offices” of the UN with a “complementary process”.
“The Secretary General, in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Organization, remains committed to accompanying both States while seeking to overcome their differences with respect to this border dispute”, said the statement.
The Essequibo region is under UN-mediation since the signing of the Geneva Accord in 1966, through which Venezuela and Guyana seek to resolve the dispute that they maintained after Caracas denounced in 1962 before the UN the Arbitral Award issued in 1899 by a court in Paris that set the common limits.
Venezuela claims the Essequibo river as a border, while Guyana points out that the borderline is defined from the milestone known as Monte Roraima.
The Essequibo region covers an area of some 160,000 square kilometers, which is three quarters of the territory Guyana currently has.
During the last months Venezuela and Guyana have held several rounds of talks under UN mediation, but have not reached an agreement.
Since the beginning of 2017, the Secretary General appointed Dag Halvor Nylander as his personal representative in this matter, who, according to the statement, “devoted himself to a series of intensive high-level efforts to try to reach a negotiated settlement of the dispute” .
Nylander served between 2012 and 2016 as Norway’s special envoy in the peace process between the Colombian government and the former FARC guerrilla and had previously represented his country to the UN.
The differences between the two countries increased in recent years after the US ExxonMobil discovered oil deposits in waters in the area of litigation.
The Government of Venezuela approved by decree in 2015 the creation of the Operational Zones of Integral Maritime and Insular Defense (Zodimain) that dictated an administrative order of defense of the country, with a demarcation that included as its own all the Atlantic waters off the coast of Essequibo.
Guyana rejected the decision, which increased the discomfort between the parties.
Although in the Geneva Agreement the two countries gave the Secretary General of the UN the responsibility to choose a means for the peaceful resolution of the issue and the possibility of, if this was not successful, to seek another way, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry reiterated in December of 2016 that the ICJ rejects as an instance to settle the dispute.
In contrast, Georgetown looks favorably on that body. The UN has made it clear that the ICJ’s intervention will be carried out unless Venezuela and Guyana jointly decide otherwise.
