Do you want to hear about a dispute from 1899 between Venezuela and Guyana? Cus I'm going to tell you about it anyway.

I wrote about the first virtual hearing of the UN's top court, the International Court of Justice, in June. https://www.courthousenews.com/border-dispute-between-guyana-venezuela-hits-un-court/

And today, we're going to get the answer to the question that's kept all of us on the edges of our seats for months: who owns the Guayana Esequiba region?

You can watch live if you want: https://www.icj-cij.org/en/multimedia-live-original

Venezuela didn't turn up because it doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the court. The UN referred the matter to the court in 2018, after it tried and failed to mediate the dispute. Again, I might add.

Here's the timeline:

1811 - Venezuela declares independence from Spain, claims Guayana Esequiba as it's own.

1814 - The UK takes the entire country of Guyana off the hands of the Dutch in a treaty, the Brits are like "Eh we've planted a flag, this region is ours."

1840 - An explorer hired by the UK declares the border along the Schomburgk Line, conveniently given the region to the UK. Venezuela, unsurprisingly, is not a fan.

Things mostly truck along find until gold is discovered in the region.

The whole mess goes to an international tribunal in 1898 (mostly because the US and the Monroe Doctrine but it's Friday afternoon and I don't have the energy for all that.) In 1899 the Tribunal awards the region to the UK.

Venezuela claims there is an "Anglo-Russian conspiracy" (times have changed, eh?) and refuses to accept the result.

There are lots of attempts to diplomatically resolve the boundary that go nowhere and at the first UN assembly in 1945, Venezuela calls the UK out.

There is a lot of global political infighting with no resolution. Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez plans to invade Guayana Esequiba in 1958 but then there's a coup so that plan gets put on hold.

In 1962, Venezuela complains again before the UN and this time brings the receipts. Turns out there almost probably was collusion in 1899.

In February 1966, British Guiana (as it was called), the United Kingdom and Venezuela go to Geneva, where I assume they eat a lot of chocolate, buy some fancy watches and also sign the Geneva Agreement, which is supposed to fix this issue.

(Spoiler alert: We're here today, so that didn't happen.)

In May 1966, Guyana became an independent state and picks up basically where the UK left off.

In 2013, they discover the new gold, oil, in the region. As I'm sure you can guess this does not improve the whole mess.

Guyana says "hey Exxon want to come drill some oil? And Exxon is like "Yeah brt." And Venezuela is like "Yeah no."

There's a lot of stuff about maritime disputes that I'm not going to get into, but it gets worse and worse and finally, Guyana gets very mad and revokes the license of the Venezuelan national airline, stranding planes and passengers in Guyana.

So the UN tries again to mediate this dispute, which has gone so well in the past, and in 2018, Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres throws up his hands and says "Fuck it I'm making this whole mess someone else's problem."*

*probably

Guyana thinks that The Hague is a nice place to visit (corona joke is on you) so says it wants the ICJ to adjudicate the dispute.

Trying real hard to take this ruling seriously from Judge Face Shield here.

The court concludes it has jurisdiction to hear the case. That's all that today was about. You didn't think we'd get an actual resolution today, did you?

Now we will move on to the next step, which will be a hearing on the merits, sometime in 2021. Venezuela can participate in this round if it wants, despite sitting out the last one.

I was reminded that poor Guyana also has a contested border on the other side, with Suriname, also dating from the Dutch-Anglo Treaty, adding further evidence to my theory that everything is the fault of the Dutch.