Venezuela’s leader to defend her country’s claim over mineral-rich Guyana region before UN court
CARACAS (AP) — Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez arrived in the Netherlands on Sunday to defend his country’s claim to the EU. Mineral and oil-rich region in Western Guyana It is before the United Nations’ highest court in a decades-old dispute.
International Court of Justice A series of hearings are taking place in The Hague with its South American neighbors. both claim ownership of Essequibo – a region of approximately 62,000 square miles located nearby, rich in gold, diamonds, timber and other natural resources huge offshore oil fields.
Venezuela has considered Essequibo as its own since the Spanish colonial period, when the forest region remained within its borders. However, a decision made by arbitrators from Britain, Russia and the United States in 1899 ensured that the border was drawn along the Essequibo River largely in favor of Guyana.
Venezuela argues that the agreement signed in Geneva in 1966 to resolve the dispute effectively nullifies 19th-century arbitration.
The final hearing, at which Rodríguez will also be present, will be held on Monday. It will likely take months for the court to make a final and legally binding decision on the case.
Rodríguez, who came to power in January following the US military operation that overthrew Nicolás Maduro, said after landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport that his country “has shown at every historical stage what our land means since we were born as a republic.”
The Essequibo case was brought to the International Court of Justice by Guyana in 2018, and it was confirmed before international authorities that the party drawing the border lines was the 1899 decision, not the 1966 agreement. Venezuela warned that its participation in the hearings did not mean it accepted or recognized the ICJ’s jurisdiction.
At the opening of the hearings, Guyana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hugh Hilton Todd, told international judges that the dispute “has been a stain on our existence as a sovereign state from the beginning” and that 70% of Guyana’s territory was at stake.
