Carisa Lee and Jesse Ramdeo

Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cari­com are re­mind­ing Venezuela that noth­ing should be done to dis­rupt the tran­quil­li­ty of the re­gion, as it should re­spect­ed as a zone of peace.

The warn­ing came yes­ter­day, hours af­ter the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) or­dered Venezuela not to take any ac­tion to chal­lenge, dis­rupt or in­ter­fere with Guyana’s long­stand­ing con­trol and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion. Guyana con­sti­tutes more than two-thirds of the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry.

In a re­lease hours af­ter the rul­ing, Cari­com warned that “Venezuela can­not, by a ref­er­en­dum, or oth­er­wise, vi­o­late in­ter­na­tion­al law and dis­re­gard the or­der of the world’s high­est court”.

Venezue­lans are still sched­uled to go to the polls to­mor­row to vote in a ref­er­en­dum on whether that coun­try should an­nex the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

How­ev­er, in the wake of the ICJ rul­ing, Cari­com in­sist­ed that Venezuela com­plies with in­ter­na­tion­al law in all re­spects, and the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions, and called on the Nico­las Maduro regime to take no ac­tions in vi­o­la­tion of them.

Cari­com said the Venezuela-Guyana con­tro­ver­sy is prop­er­ly be­fore the ICJ by the de­ci­sion of the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions for ‘fi­nal set­tle­ment’ and de­mand­ed that Venezuela pur­sue its claims with­in the law and that le­gal process.

Al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment on the ICJ de­ci­sion, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne said Cari­com state­ments are en­dorsed by T&T and Guyana.

“This most re­cent state­ment re­flects our com­mon po­si­tion on to­day’s de­ter­mi­na­tions by the ICJ,” Browne said.

Mean­while, in a re­lease on the is­sue, Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali said the rul­ing was legal­ly bind­ing on Venezuela re­gard­less of the out­come of its ref­er­en­dum to­mor­row.

He said this was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Venezuela to join Guyana in demon­strat­ing re­spect for in­ter­na­tion­al law and the prin­ci­ples that gov­ern peace­ful co­ex­is­tence.

“We be­lieve that jus­tice, not force, should be the ar­biter of in­ter­na­tion­al dis­putes,” Ali said.

Ali said they are ded­i­cat­ed to pur­su­ing a peace­ful, le­gal res­o­lu­tion to this dis­pute in the right and prop­er place – the ICJ – as au­tho­rised by the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al in the ex­er­cise of his pow­ers un­der the Gene­va Agree­ment of 1966.

De­scrib­ing the sol­i­dar­i­ty of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty with Guyana as in­valu­able, Ali added, “We ap­peal to our sis­ter coun­tries of Cari­com and the broad­er in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the prin­ci­ples of jus­tice and in­ter­na­tion­al law in re­la­tion to the con­tro­ver­sy over Guyana’s bor­der with Venezuela.”

He said the re­gion’s col­lec­tive voice can serve as a bea­con for the re­spect of the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter, the rule of law and the peace­ful set­tle­ment of dis­putes.

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, ICJ pres­i­dent, Judge Joan E Donoghue, de­liv­ered an or­der on the re­quest for the in­di­ca­tion of pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures filed by Guyana on 30 Oc­to­ber.

In its re­quest, Guyana stat­ed that the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela, through its Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil, pub­lished a list of five ques­tions that it plans to put be­fore the Venezue­lan peo­ple in a ‘Con­sul­ta­tive Ref­er­en­dum’ to­mor­row (De­cem­ber 3).

Ac­cord­ing to the ap­pli­cant, the pur­pose of these ques­tions is “to ob­tain re­spons­es that would sup­port Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to aban­don and to re­sort in­stead to uni­lat­er­al mea­sures to ‘re­solve’ the con­tro­ver­sy with Guyana by for­mal­ly an­nex­ing and in­te­grat­ing in­to Venezuela all of the ter­ri­to­ry at is­sue in these pro­ceed­ings, which com­pris­es more than two-thirds of Guyana”.

Ac­cord­ing to the judg­ment, the ICJ said, “Pend­ing a fi­nal de­ci­sion in the case, the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela shall re­frain from tak­ing any ac­tion which would mod­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion that cur­rent­ly pre­vails in the ter­ri­to­ry in dis­pute, where­by the Co-op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana ad­min­is­ters and ex­er­cis­es con­trol over that area.”

It added, “Both par­ties shall re­frain from any ac­tion which might ag­gra­vate or ex­tend the dis­pute be­fore the Court or make it more dif­fi­cult to re­solve.”

In tak­ing note of the rul­ing, the Venezuela gov­ern­ment main­tained that, “it does not recog­nise the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice to set­tle the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy on the Guyana Es­se­qui­bo, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the ex­is­tence of the 1966 Gene­va Agree­ment.” It added that it will con­tin­ue with all the prepa­ra­tions to car­ry out the con­sul­ta­tive ref­er­en­dum. “On De­cem­ber 3rd, the Venezue­lan peo­ple will go out to ex­er­cise their vote, for the first time in his­to­ry, to de­fend their ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty, and they will rat­i­fy that our rights over Guyana Es­se­qui­bo are in­alien­able and un­ques­tion­able.”

Mean­while, one busi­ness body in Guyana is al­ready look­ing for­ward to a de-es­ca­la­tion of ten­sions over the re­gion.

George­town Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Kester Hut­son, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, said the rul­ing will pave the way for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try.

“We both will lose if this goes south and we are not go­ing to ac­cept that. We have tak­en a po­si­tion that we will op­er­ate as a peace­ful na­tion. We have to build Guyana. We are con­sid­ered as a sup­port to the re­gion and we en­cour­age de­vel­op­ments and in­vest­ments in Guyana.”