On Monday, 4 May 2026, legal and diplomatic representatives of Guyana laid out a comprehensive, evidence-backed case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), refuting Venezuela’s long-standing territorial claim to the 160,000-square-kilometer Essequibo region by documenting Guyana’s continuous, uninterrupted administration of the territory and challenging the legitimacy of Venezuela’s legal arguments.
This week marks a critical milestone in the decades-long border dispute, as the ICJ convenes to hear the merits of Guyana’s case centered on the legal validity of the 1899 Arbitral Tribunal Award, the original agreement that formalized the land boundary between the two neighboring South American nations.
Speaking on behalf of Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Donnette Streete, Director of the Frontiers Division, told the UN’s highest judicial body that neither historical colonial power Spain nor modern Venezuela ever exercised governing control over Essequibo. Streete outlined the territory’s deep demographic and administrative ties to Guyana, noting that Dutch settlers were the first Europeans to occupy the region, which was later populated by descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured Asian workers brought to the area by Dutch and British colonial rulers between the 17th and 19th centuries. Today, Essequibo is fully integrated into Guyana’s national governance: the region elects nine representatives to Guyana’s national parliament, Guyana collects all regional taxes, manages public services, and leads conservation efforts to protect the area’s extraordinary biodiversity. According to Guyana’s 2022 national census, more than 313,000 people call Essequibo home – accounting for over one-third of the country’s total population, including nine indigenous groups that have inhabited the land long before the formation of modern national borders.
Carl Greenidge, Guyana’s lead agent before the ICJ for the case, supported Streete’s arguments with extensive cartographic and historical evidence. He presented maps demonstrating that the farthest eastern Spanish colonial outposts never reached Essequibo, sitting roughly 650 kilometers outside the region’s boundaries. To further prove early Dutch administrative control, Greenidge highlighted that 35 locations across Essequibo still retain their original Dutch place names to this day.
Greenidge walked the court through the documented timeline of European settlement: “Post-Columbian history of what is now Guyana begins with the arrival of the Dutch in 1598, the first Europeans to establish permanent settlements in the territory. By 1616, they had formally founded the Colony of Essequibo, constructed Fort Kykoveral along the Mazaruni River – west of the Essequibo River – as their official seat of government, and began administering the territory stretching west all the way to the Orinoco River. Five years later, in 1621, the Dutch West India Company took over formal governance of the colony, and the administrative capital was relocated to Fort Zealandia in 1744.”
He emphasized that Spanish colonial forces never established a presence east of the Orinoco, where Essequibo is located: “The Spanish were nowhere to be found, not east of the Orinoco, at any rate. Their nearest outpost was San Tome on the banks of the Orinoco, the easternmost Spanish settlement ever established. The Spanish Governor of that outpost was candid about his inability to extend control further east, writing that the settlement was already far too distant from all other Spanish positions to expand governance.”
Earlier in the day, Guyana’s Foreign Minister Hugh Todd opened the proceedings by calling on Venezuela to commit to abiding by the ICJ’s final ruling. “Guyana reiterates its pledge to honor and comply with the court’s judgment whatever it may be, as it is bound to do in any event by the United Nations Charter and the Statute of the court. Guyana hopes that Venezuela would make the same pledge,” Todd stated.
Leading international public international law expert Pierre d’Argent, one of Guyana’s legal team members, grounded the case in prior ICJ precedent. He referenced the court’s 2020 and 2023 rulings on preliminary matters in the dispute, noting that Venezuela has never directly challenged the long-standing legal principle of res judicata – the rule that finalized court judgments are binding. D’Argent added that Venezuela has not filed a formal application for review under Article 61 of the ICJ Statute, the only legal pathway to challenge a binding res judicata ruling. “It must be concluded therefore that Venezuela has not discovered any new fact of such a nature that, had it been known earlier, would be a decisive factor on the conclusions reached by the court in its judgments of 2020 and 2023,” d’Argent argued. “In these conditions, these judgments remain res judicata for the parties and for the court itself.”
Another senior member of Guyana’s legal team, Paul Reichler, reminded the court that Venezuela itself accepted, respected, and complied with the 1899 Arbitral Award for more than 60 years after it was issued. Venezuela only first formally challenged the award’s validity in February 1962, in a letter from its Permanent Representative to the UN Secretary-General. At that time, Reichler noted, Venezuela explicitly reaffirmed that it still recognized the 1897 border treaty – the agreement that established the original arbitral process – as a valid binding international treaty. It was not until 1963, 66 years after Venezuela ratified the 1897 treaty, that the country first raised objections to the treaty itself.
