Geneva Agreement (1966)

The Geneva Agreement, signed in Geneva, Switzerland on February 17, 1966, was established to resolve the controversy between Venezuela and the United Kingdom regarding the border between Venezuela and British Guiana.^[1] The agreement's official title is the "Agreement to Resolve the Controversy over the Frontier between Venezuela and British Guiana," but is better known as the Geneva Agreement. It is a treaty signed by government representatives of Venezuela and the United Kingdom, as well as the Prime Minister of British Guiana, in which the steps for resolution of the border controversy were detailed. The disagreement originated from Venezuela's contention that the "Arbitral Award of 1899^[2] about the frontier between British Guiana and Venezuela is null and void"^[1] followed by Venezuela declaring ownership over a large portion of Guyana's territory.^[3]

The Agreement

The Geneva Agreement was published in the Official Gazette of Venezuela on April 15, 1966. It was later registered on May 5, 1966 in the General Office of the Organization of the United Nations under the Registration Number 8192.^[4][5]

Three months after the agreement, on May 26, 1966, the colony of British Guyana gained independence. British Guyana became the "Republic of Guyana" (and from 1970: Cooperative Republic of Guyana), and formed part of the agreement as a sovereign and independent country along with United Kingdom and Venezuela.^[6]

The Geneva Agreement is a transitory agreement, yet to arrive to a definite solution. Therefore, the area in claim comes under the authority of the Government of Guyana until it does not resolve something different according to the treaty. The first article of the document recognizes the containment of Venezuela to consider invalid and írrito'.^[7] United Kingdom and Guyana (then British Guyana).

The Geneva Agreement establishes the creation of an integrated Mixed Commission by the representatives of Venezuela and of British Guyana. In a 4-year term, they would have to decide what could be the solution to the border problem.

In 1983 Venezuela proposed direct negotiation with Guyana, but Guyana countered with three alternatives in lieu of negotiation (General Assembly of the UN, Council of Security or International Court of Justice) that Venezuela refused.

This same year,1983, by the initiative of Venezuela, the border conflict continued under the auspices of the Secretary General of the United Nations, in concordance to the foreseen in the article IV number 2 of the agreement and attached to the article 33º of the Letter of the United Nations concerning the means of peaceful solutions of controversies.^[8]

In 1987, Guyana and Venezuela decide to accept the method of the Good Jobs that begins to work from 1989 in the person of a Good Officiant elected and accepted by the parts. This figure has like function approach to both governments with the end that these arrive to a satisfactory solution as it dictates it the treaty.^[9]

At present, the Good Officiant is a Jamaican Norman Girvan who has been chosen and accepted by both countries with the consent of the Secretary General of the UN.^[10][11][12]

Official Position of the Countries

The positions of the parties arise out of different interpretations of Article 1 of the agreement:

For Guyana, the purpose of the agreement is initially to determine if Referee's decision of Paris is invalid and írrito. Therefore, unless Venezuela show the nullity, for the Guyanese State the Referee's decision of Paris is a definite sentence.

For Venezuela, the object of the agreement is to engage to the parts in order to arrive to a satisfactory solution for practical agreement between the two countries. It considers that the nullity of the Referee's decision of Paris is implicit, and explicitly showed and accepted in the text of the document, signed by Guyana when it was still a colony, and that without this recognition, simply did not have felt the agreement neither Guyana would have to have it signed.

Criticism

The Geneva Agreement was criticized for having reopened a case that many in Guyana felt was closed. Critics included President Cheddi Jagan, founder of the People's Progressive Party, who wrote unfavorably about the agreement in his book "The West on Trial" (1996).^[13]

Venezuela - although at present it constitutes the most valuable document for the process of negotiation - perceived that it suffered from concrete elements that allowed to materialize the total recovery of the territory by the contradictions that it possesses so much background as of form.

Background because

• It agreed to arrive to a satisfactory solution for practical agreement that in practice shows unfeasible results
• Venezuela allowed that United Kingdom transferred him the territorial dispute to his colony,
• Venezuela allowed that the colony resulted independently without the border problem being solved,
• It gave him character of state to a colony that did not possess it,
• It would negotiate since with the heiress of an undress that propiciaron his colonists and
• It exchanged the correlation of strengths: no longer it would perceive to Venezuela like the feeble nation usurped by the colonial power of United Kingdom but now the poor and recently independent Guyana would look to be the feeble nation in front of the rich country and oil tanker like Venezuela that it would want to remove him part of "his territory".

Of form, because it results naïve to think that motu own Guyana will return him to Venezuela three fourth parts of what considers his territory inherited to the moment of his independence and of the cual has the administration and occupation, being able to explode his resources like this such activities are not symbols of sovereignty. Likewise, three months after the Geneva Agreement, British Guyana declares independence, being since the Cooperative Republic of Guyana; Venezuela recognizes his independence without before have solved with United Kingdom the problem of border, although it does the exception that it recognizes to the new state to this of the river Esequibo and that reserves his rights of sovereignty west of the river.

References