The boundary dispute between Venezuela and Guyana has existed for a long time and was sparked by colonial claims to overlapping South American regions made by Britain and Spain. The Esequiba region, which makes up around two-thirds of Guyana’s landmass and is home to abundant natural resources including gas and oil, is at the center of the conflict.
The conflict remained unsolved for more than a century after international organizations attempted to broker a peaceful resolution many times. The majority of the disputed land was handed to Guyana (then British Guiana) by an arbitration panel in 1899; however, Venezuela rejected the decision as illegitimate and persisted in its claim to the whole Esequiba region. The two nations signed the Geneva Agreement in 1966, the year Guyana gained independence, which created a process for settling differences amicably.
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ExxonMobil’s 2015 discovery of significant oil reserves off the coast of Guyana sparked a new round of disputes and raised tensions between the two nations. Venezuela issued a declaration claiming the marine territory where the oil reserves are situated and decried the oil exploration activities as a breach of its sovereignty. Guyana requested the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to intervene in order to defend its territorial rights after rejecting Venezuela’s claims as illegitimate and unfounded. The conflict was brought to the ICJ in 2018 by the UN Secretary-General, who declared in 2020 that the court had jurisdiction over the matter. Venezuela does not recognize the ICJ and declined to take part in the proceedings.
Dear Editor,
The anonymity of your Sunday 5th editorial writer does not by any means let him//her off the hook. So, while not professing to be an “expert” myself, but instead to have a repository of knowledge and experience after dabbling in this issue for more than three decades, some things are old hat. So, here goes:
1. Bird Island: by whatever means or methodology, Dominica some years ago ceded its control of Bird Island to Venezuela. Situated 140 miles west of Dominica, within its Exclusive Economic Zone, and 340 miles North of Venezuela, this was an attempt by our neighbor to the West to extend its jurisdictional reach way beyond its shores into the waters of the Eastern Caribbean states, by seeking to assert rights that would derive from its administration of Bird Island.
There is one fundamental flaw in this position: Bird Island is an island in name only, not nature. Bird Island does not fit the legal definition of an island under the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). As stated therein, “Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf’.
For centuries, the only purpose to which Bird Island has been put to use is for guano (bird and bat droppings) which is a valuable source of phosphate used in fertilizer. As human habitation cannot be sustained there, the more recent military outpost manned by the Venezuelans has to be periodically victualled from the mainland.
Reality check: Venezuela’s intention to assert its sovereignty and claim an EEZ of 200 miles around this bit of rock which is not visible at high tide, will not pass muster of UNCLOS. No wonder it has steadfastly refused to become party to the Convention which sets out a number of internationally recognized rules relating to seaspace, which includes the Regime of Islands. The editorial should have made this important clarification.
2. The Sunday editorial refers to the issue of Venezuelan expansionism in terms which appear to separate Guyana-Venezuela relations from the relations our sister states in CARICOM have with Venezuela, within the context of finding a solution through dialogue. Yet, it could have been pointed out to our comrades up the Eastern Caribbean island chain that the Maduro Decree of 2015, which sought to delimit maritime zones of Guyana as part of Venezuela, also extended demarcation lines Northwards which similarly took in for itself, waters off those island states, and even as far east as French Guiana! Given the earlier Declarations of the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, I would say that in the current charged atmosphere, the Maduro Decree effectively moves the bilateral situation pertaining to the Essequibo into the realm of regional geo-politics and requires individual Member States of CARICOM to defend this similar acquisitive threat to their maritime seaspace.
Venezuela is a Member of the United Nations. Article 2(3) and 2(4) of the UN Charter makes it mandatory (‘shall’) for Members to settle disputes by peaceful means, and to refrain from both the use of force and importantly, the threat to use force. Article 94 captures the undertaking of Members who are parties to a dispute before the ICJ – like the current case engaging the distinguished jurists in The Hague – to comply with the decision of the Court. Venezuela, on the sole basis of a posthumous letter of one of its junior lawyers at the 1897 Arbitration, sought in 1962 to undo the 1899 Arbitral Award, 57 years after it had faithfully complied with it and signed an official map to that effect in 1905. It has steadfastly declined to be bound by various provisions of UNCLOS and currently espouses a fanciful interpretation of the 1966 Geneva Agreement.
Do our sister states in CARICOM not see a pattern of undesirable international conduct, through disregard for legal obligations, on the part of Venezuela, which is relevant to the delimitation issues associated with the Maduro Decree in their respective maritime spaces, in keeping with the Region’s stated intention to maintain the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace? It is submitted that now is not the time for CARICOM-bashing, especially in circumstances where vital national interests might collide head-on with calls for regional solidarity which, at the end of the day, does not win many votes within domestic constituencies. It is rather a time for consolidating solidarity and building alliances within our Community based on a common threat.
Yours faithfully,
Neville J. Bissember
Editor-in-note: There was never any indication in the editorial on November 5th that Venezuela thought its purchase of Bird Island would result in a 200-mile EEZ claim. The editorial stated: “That aside, in 2006 Venezuela to all intents and purposes bullied and bribed Dominica into surrendering its sovereignty over Bird Island, which lies within its Exclusive Economic Zone. In return, the Caracas government agreed to invest approximately US$29 million in improving Dominica’s infrastructure, as well as provide petroleum-based products at the lowest possible cost.”
