The International Court of Justice (ICJ) yesterday ruled that it has jurisdiction to determine the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Award on the frontier between Guyana and Venezuela in what is seen as a major victory for this country in its bid to definitively settle a decades-old controversy.
The Court – the principal judicial organ of the United Nations – also declared that it could address the related question of the definitive settlement of the land boundary controversy between the two territories. No schedule has been fixed by the court for the hearing of the substantive case.
The decision, which was delivered by the President of the ICJ, Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, is based on the text, the object and purpose of the February 17th 1966 Geneva Agreement, which aimed to address the controversy over the award, as well as the circumstances surrounding the agreement’s conclusion.
