GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – The government of Guyana is being urged to lobby nations in Latin America to ensure that neighboring Venezuela complies with the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) final ruling on the long-standing border dispute.
International Relations Professor Dr. Mark Kirton said that lobbying Latin American nations will be beneficial in convincing Venezuela of the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Tribunal Award on the land boundary with Guyana.
He also urged Guyana to recognize Brazil as a valued strategic partner and emerging regional and global player in Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC).
“I have no doubt that the ICJ will not entertain the spurious claim, but I think that compliance could be a question that will be raised and, therefore, even before that judgment is made somewhere, certainly by 2024-2025, that we should enlist stronger support from Latin American states to ensure compliance with the judgment wherever it goes and that Brazil, to my mind, maybe a key player in that particular issue,” he told the launching ceremony of his latest publication titled “Building Bridges in The Amazon – Guyana Brazil Relations Into the 21st Century,” said Kirton, a former member of the Guyana Defense Force (GDF).
Meanwhile, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo acknowledged Brazil’s historical role in the Guyana-Venezuela boundary dispute earlier this week by taking the position that its existing borders would not be changed.
“We have had public declarations from major countries in the region. Brazil, for one, said that as far as they are concerned, the border is fixed… several administrations saying that so in Latin America we have had successes too,” he said.
Jagdeo noted that Brazil’s position is based on the fact that Guyana has contiguous borders with that country and Venezuela, “so any adjustment of say the frame will have an impact too n Brazil, and so they took a definitive position.
In response to the ICJ’s dismissal of Venezuela’s preliminary objection earlier this week, because Britain had a say in the border case, Caracas vowed to take all steps to pursue its claim to the mineral and forest-rich Essequibo Region.
“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will exhaustively evaluate its implications and adopt all the measures at its disposal to defend its legitimate rights and territorial integrity,” the Venezuelan government said in a statement.
The Nicolas Maduro-led administration dismissed the ICJ’s decision that Britain was not an indispensable party to the case because Guyana was granted independence in 1966.
Despite that judgment, Venezuela maintains that Britain should be considered at the ICJ because the European Union had used “fraudulent mechanisms” to seize its territory.
and then 