On Wednesday, May 6, 2026, Venezuela’s legal delegation presented stark warnings to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, arguing that upholding the validity of the controversial 1899 Arbitral Tribunal Award over the Essequibo Region will leave the decades-long territorial dispute between Venezuela and neighboring Guyana permanently unresolved.
Speaking on behalf of Venezuela, Senegalese-born international law professor Makane Moïse Mbengue, who wore a lapel pin printed with Venezuela’s claimed territorial map that includes the 160,000-square-kilometer Essequibo Region, told the ICJ panel that validating the 1899 award would achieve the exact opposite of a lasting resolution. Instead, it would lock the two South American nations into a permanent deadlock – an outcome the 1966 Geneva Agreement was explicitly crafted to overcome. Two other members of Venezuela’s legal team, professors Andreas Zimmermann and Antonio Remiro Brotóns, did not wear the symbolic pin during their presentations.
Professor Brotóns echoed Mbengue’s position, stressing that if the ICJ dismisses Venezuela’s challenge by confirming the 1899 award’s legal standing, the 1966 Geneva Agreement would be reduced to an empty, meaningless document. He characterized such a ruling as the final step in what he called the “judicial whitewashing” of a territorial seizure imposed on Venezuela by the British Empire 127 years ago. Brotóns further warned that a ruling upholding the 1899 award would inflame tensions between the two neighboring states, rather than resolving the dispute. “This will not put an end to the controversy. On the contrary, it may exacerbate it by driving the parties further apart. It will merely be another step in a never ending saga that the parties alone can end through a common agreement. No one should have any interest in fueling the conflict,” he told the court.
Brotóns also criticized Guyana’s approach to the dispute over the past decade, arguing that the country has abandoned its commitments under the Geneva Agreement through what he described as a combination of deliberate disregard and territorial ambition. He claimed Guyana has effectively taken the place of the United Kingdom as an “usurper” of the contested territory, and has even portrayed itself as a victim of Venezuelan aggression despite this history. “Decolonization cannot be exploited to reinforce or perpetuate colonial injustices. The colonial appropriation of the United Kingdom cannot, within the normative framework of decolonization, result in a legal title for Guyana against Venezuela. Venezuela supported Guyana’s independence,” he added.
Mbengue centered his core argument on the legal principle of novation, asserting that the 1966 Geneva Agreement legally invalidated the 1899 award and replaced it with a new framework centered on bilateral negotiation, mutual agreement, and equal sovereign standing for both parties. He emphasized that Guyana explicitly agreed to this structure when it signed onto the accord, committing to find a new resolution to the dispute over the resource-rich Essequibo Region.
Under the terms of the Geneva Agreement, both parties are required to pursue a mutually acceptable solution through direct bilateral talks, Mbengue explained. If the court upholds the 1899 award and rejects the mandate for negotiated settlement, the dispute will again be trapped in stalemate. Even if the court overturns the 1899 award and Guyana still refuses to return to negotiations, the controversy will be left to fester, falling short of the requirements set out in the 1966 accord, he added.
Mbengue also highlighted key provisions of the agreement that bar either side from claiming sovereign rights or legal prescription through unilateral activities undertaken during the negotiation process. The accord, he said, clearly establishes that both parties agreed to operate within a new legal framework where all territorial claims remain open pending a mutually negotiated outcome. Notably, Venezuela’s legal team did not reference the clause in the Geneva Agreement that allows the United Nations Secretary-General to refer the dispute to the ICJ for a binding ruling if bilateral and good offices mediation processes fail to produce a resolution.
Addressing the transition to Guyanese independence, Mbengue told judges that the United Kingdom did not dismiss Venezuela’s long-standing allegations of fraud in the 1899 proceedings, and that the original 1899 framework was not simply inherited by newly independent Guyana. Instead, he noted, Article 8 of the Geneva Agreement explicitly stipulates that Guyana becomes a party to the new negotiated framework upon gaining independence.
Guyana’s legal team had already presented its case earlier this week, submitting documentary evidence that showed Venezuela accepted the 1899 award for more than 60 years through actions including participating in border demarcation, publishing maps that recognized the award, and making official statements affirming its validity. Guyana’s side noted that Venezuela only challenged the award after a 1960s letter from a former secretary to the 1899 arbitral tribunal, Mallet Prevost, claimed the proceedings included irregularities that favored Britain, which was Guyana’s colonial ruler at the time.
Mbengue countered Guyana’s position by pointing to 50 years of practice consistent with the novation framework established by the Geneva Agreement. For half a century, he noted, Guyana never invoked the 1899 award in any international forum, and instead participated in negotiations through the Good Officer process and other mechanisms created by the 1966 accord. “That sustained practice from Guyana reflects precisely the understanding that the award had been superseded. The intention to novate emerges finally from the practice of the United Kingdom, which consistently maintained in its diplomatic practice that former colonies could not simply inherit all obligations of colonial era treaties by automatic succession,” Mbengue added.
Venezuela has maintained its position that the ICJ’s 2020 ruling asserting jurisdiction over Guyana’s case was incorrect, and Mbengue confirmed that “Venezuela reserves its position on the matter.” Even setting the jurisdiction question aside, Mbengue argued that the legal novation completed by the Geneva Agreement bars the ICJ from adjudicating the territorial dispute. He claimed that Guyana’s case amounts to an attempt to revive the 1899 award through the backdoor of ICJ jurisdiction, after having abandoned it through the front door of the 1966 agreement’s substantive terms. “International law does not permit that,” he said.
Professor Andreas Zimmermann, another member of Venezuela’s legal team, criticized Guyana’s inconsistent handling of the Geneva Agreement, noting that Guyana relied on the accord to bring the case to the ICJ, but has since refused to engage with the binding legal obligations the agreement imposes on it. “What is more, Guyana, by not engaging in the substantive interpretation of the Geneva agreement, implicitly acknowledged that it has nothing, nothing to say on the manifold arguments related to the impact of the Geneva agreement on how to solve the boundary dispute, arguments that Venezuela had already brought forward in its written pleadings,” Zimmermann said.
Zimmermann stressed that the explicit purpose of the jointly negotiated Geneva Agreement is to resolve “any outstanding controversy” related to the border. If the parties had only intended to address the narrow question of the 1899 award’s validity, that limited scope would have been clearly stated in the agreement’s preamble, he argued. To support his position, Zimmermann presented excerpts from official diplomatic documents from both Guyana and Venezuela that he says prove the Geneva Agreement was intended to serve as the foundation for a mutually negotiated settlement between the two sovereign states.
