(CNN Spanish) – The meeting between Guyana and Venezuela on the Essequibo Territory dispute is scheduled for this Thursday, in which several actors will be involved.
The meeting was proposed by St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves in letters to Venezuela and Guyana for December 14.
Aerial view of the Esequipo region taken on December 10, 2023 in Guyana. (Source: ROBERTO CISNEROS/AFP/Getty Images)
Both countries accepted the invitation to the meeting and invited the President of Brazil, Lula da Silva, as a participant. According to the letters, the meeting will take place in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
For his part, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said he welcomed “direct and personal discussions”; Meanwhile, the Government of Guyana announced on social media that it agreed to meet with its Venezuelan counterpart, but remained firm on its position on Essequibo.
What are Guyana and Venezuela demanding in the territorial dispute over the Essequibo?
Essequibo is an area of almost 160,000 km2 in northeastern South America with access to the Atlantic Ocean and lies between the mouths of the Orinoco and Essequibo rivers.
The controversy between Venezuela and Guyana over the Essequibo has its origins in the late 19th century and both countries claim it as their own, although Guyana has actual control.
Guyana retains control of the territory thanks to the Paris Arbitration Award of 1899, in which international mediators granted the British, then ruling the colony of Guyana, sovereignty over the oil-rich Essequibo territory.
However, Venezuela maintains that it lost the territory in 1899 because of the arbitration award, which it has held null and void since 1962, when it denounced alleged procedural deficiencies at the United Nations.
In 1966, the Geneva Convention was signed, in which the United Kingdom admitted the existence of a dispute over the Essequibo territory. That same year, Guyana became independent and began a period of direct negotiations with Venezuela.
Since then, however, no agreement has been reached on this dispute, which has led to an increase in tensions in recent weeks due to the referendum in Venezuela at the beginning of December, in which around 95% of citizens voted in favor of the creation of a Venezuelan state in the Essequibo region , granting Venezuelan citizenship to its population and “incorporating this state into the map of Venezuelan territory”.
The Government of Guyana assures that Caracas seeks the “annexation” of Essequibo through this consultative referendum. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has also declared that an annexation of Essequibo by Venezuela would be illegal.
Before the referendum, Guyana rejected the referendum and asked the International Court of Justice to issue an emergency order to stop the referendum. The ICJ ordered the Maduro government not to take any action that would exacerbate the Essequibo dispute; However, Venezuela again ignored the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice to resolve the dispute.
The International Court of Justice, the United Nations' main judicial body, has been trying to resolve the dispute for several years.
In March 2018, Guyana appealed to the International Court of Justice to “confirm the legal validity and binding effect” of the Paris Arbitral Award decision.
Months later, in June 2018, Venezuela submitted a letter to the International Court of Justice stating that that body did not have jurisdiction to decide the matter and that it would therefore not participate in the proceedings. The ICJ then decided that the first thing to do was to resolve the issue of its jurisdiction, which it also did in 2020 when it ruled that it had jurisdiction to hear the case.
And tensions remain: Venezuela ignores the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, rejects the Paris arbitration award and claims that the only legal instrument it recognizes in the dispute is the Geneva Convention, while Guyana says that the country, despite the for this Thursday's meeting is the only legal instrument it recognizes in the dispute. The land border will not be up for discussion and will respect any ruling by the International Court of Justice.
With information from CNN's Ivonne Valdés, Abel Alvarado, Michael Rios, Haley Britzky, Osmary Hernández, Germán Padinger, Jalen Beckford, Hande Atay Alam, Mía Alberti and David Shortell.