Guyana to opt out of UN Good Offices process

Foreign Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett

Guyana-Venezuela border controversy:

…says mechanism has yielded little, favours Venezuela

Guyana has signalled its intention to opt out of the United Nations Good Offices Process – a mechanism set up to help resolve the decades-old claim Venezuela has made on a portion of the Essequibo.

For decades the two states have been locked in the Good Offices Process, which ended when the latest Special Representative, Professor Norman Girvan died in April 2014.

In an invited comment, Foreign Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett explained that the Good Offices Process yielded little results after more than 20 years. “We are, therefore, looking at the other options under the Geneva Agreement,” she added, suggesting that “the other side (Venezuela) is comfortable with the Good Offices Process because it suits their purpose – no movement.”

The Good Offices and Mediation are roles taken up by the UN Secretary-General in the prevention and the peaceful settlement of disputes, as enshrined in the UN Charter. These roles can be set in motion at the Secretary-General’s own initiative, in response to a request from one or more of the parties to a dispute, or as a result of a request from the Security Council or the General Assembly.

“The other options – either of them – will have to be exercised by the UN Secretary General. Indeed prior to Professor Girvan’s death, he was given just a six-month extension which is a sign that the UN was also weary of no solution,” Rodrigues-Birkett explained.

According to the UN, the role of the Secretary-General as an important peacemaking actor has evolved through extensive practice. The range of activities carried out by the Secretary-General has included good offices, mediation, facilitation, dialogue processes and even arbitration. But Venezuelan experts have reportedly insisted that their Government sticks to the current mechanism.

Venezuelan newspaper El Universal has quoted the Retired Colonel Pompeyo Torrealba, the head of the Essequibo Advisory Unit of the Venezuelan Foreign Office as saying, “Venezuela should continue the procedure of the Good Officer because it enables us to hold a direct negotiation, without middlemen. We already know about the results where we have negotiated with intermediaries: we have lost valuable territory.”

Venezuela’s approval

According to El Universal, the consulted experts agreed that Venezuela’s approval will be always necessary for the case to be settled at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, or in any other court of competent jurisdiction. As such, they saw Rodrigues-Birkett’s call as irrelevant. This was supported by a Caribbean expert in international law who was consulted by this publication.

The issue of the Guyana/Venezuela territorial controversy was again brought to the fore after the Venezuelan Foreign Minister objected to ExxonMobil’s dispatch of a rig to proceed with the exploration of oil in the concession. A similar incident occurred in 2013 when Venezuelan authorities seized the research vessel, Teknik Perdana, in Guyanese territory and held its crew members.

Former Opposition point person on international affairs Aubrey Norton told Guyana Times that he supported Guyana’s decision to explore other options, concluding that indeed little progress had been recorded in the UN Good Offices Process.

“The Geneva Agreement has offered a plethora of options; I believe it is correct for Guyana to look at it and see what are the other options,” he stated.

According to him, the Government and Opposition should set up a joint committee to come up with a way forward. “There is need for Government and Opposition to agree on a structured way forward, so that Venezuela has no opportunity to exploit Guyana. A joint committee could help to determine the best way forward in terms of promoting Guyana’s interest,” Norton, a former Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Affairs at the University of Guyana, added.

Transcending partisanship

Despite the ongoing preparations for elections, Norton insisted that “something like territorial issues should transcend partisan political interest … elections can be no excuse for failing to discuss this holistically”.

“Guyana always has to ensure the promotion and protection of territorial integrity,” he added.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry has said it requested that the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela desist from taking any actions that could only result in the stymieing of the development of Guyana and its people and that would be in contravention of international law. The Ministry said it also informed the Caribbean Community (Caricom), Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Organisation of American States, the Commonwealth as well as the UN Secretary General about this recent action by Venezuela.

The decades-old controversy began in the 1800s, when Guyana was a colony of the British. A Tribunal of Arbitration finalised its decision on October 3, 1899, awarding unanimously to the Britain almost 90 per cent of the disputed territory.

According to Guyanese Diplomat Dr Odeen Ishmael, Venezuela had not accepted the 1899 Award as a final settlement of the border dispute and in 1944, “45 years after the Arbitral Award, Severo Mallet-Prevost, one of the four lawyers who had appeared for Venezuela before the Arbitral Tribunal, wrote a memorandum in which, for the first time, he attacked the Award on the alleged grounds that it was the result of a political deal between Great Britain and Russia,” he wrote.

In recent years the two countries have enjoyed mutually beneficial and often amicable relations.