THE HAGUE – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) holds public hearings in the case Guyana v. Venezuela

Please visit it. The sitting is open. The Court meets today to hear the first round of oral argument of Venezuela on the merit in the case concerning the arbitrary award of the third October 1899 Guyana versus Venezuela. I now invite the agent of Venezuela, His Excellency Mr. Samuel Moncada, to address the Court. You have the thought, Sir.

President Members of the Court. For nearly a century, Venezuela has consistently maintained that matters relating to its territorial integrity cannot be submitted to third party dispute resolution mechanisms. This stance is not circumstantial, nor is it strategic. It is structural. It is an integral part of its international conduct, its domestic legal system and its conception of how its most essential interests must be protected. That position has not changed. Venezuela has never consented to submitting this dispute to the jurisdiction of any court or arbitral tribunal. This has been unequivocally reaffirmed. Domestically. In the consultative referendum held on 3 December 2023, the Venezuelan people clearly expressed their rejection of submitting this dispute to the Court's jurisdiction. This reflects a consistent course of action in terms of sovereign will. Venezuela is here today because it cannot remain silent in the face of a process that Guyana intends to use to unilaterally redefine both the nature of the territorial dispute and the obligations binding Venezuela and Guyana under the Geneva Agreement. Venezuela is here today to respond to Guyana's erroneous and misleading narrative and to set straight the true legal framework of the territorial dispute and the limits imposed also by international law and the Geneva Agreement on Guyana's attempt to fraudulently transform the dispute and its obligations. President Members of the Court. Venezuela has a long tradition of historical rights over Guayana Essequiba, derived from the presence of the Spanish Empire and the Venezuelan Republic over centuries. Indeed, the Essequibo river itself is named after the Spanish explorer Juan Juan Esquivel. The Netherlands came to the territory while it was still part of the Spanish Empire, gaining independence in 1648 through the treaty of Munster, the very same treaty in which Spain recognized the Netherlands claim to the territory east of the Essequila River. The Spanish Empire was very clear about its possessions in Guayana Saciva and defended them against the Dutch in an ongoing effort to expel illegal intruders, therefore demonstrating its control over the territory. Venezuela has presented an exhaustive list of maps demonstrating the existence of Dutch possessions to the east of the Essequo river and Spanish ones to the west of the Essequa River. If that weren't enough, the British themselves have confirmed this very same Reality, just one man paid by the British Empire to justify its territorial greed in the quest for gold. The German Robert Schomburg came along from 1835 to draw an arbitrary line on Venezuelan territory that then there was an attempt to impose as a border. Venezuela never recognized that criminal act which was not perpetrated by a naturalist explorer, but by an agent of the British Empire. The British entered our territory in the years that followed, following the arbitrary Schomburg line, And then in 1897 and 1899, they sought to then legitimize that theft. Venezuela's struggle for its territorial integrity and its independence has been continuous. Our territorial rights over Guayana Sequiba were systematically eroded during the 19th century by the British Empire, which sought to appropriate half of our territory. There are many examples of provocations that occurred from the 1850s, but until the 1890s, a time when British consuls sending communications to London, conspiring to seize territory, to incite civil conflict and to try to purchase territory Venezuelan territory, ultimately then resorting to military action. Despite attempts at direct negotiations, peaceful negotiations, diplomatic negotiations. Despite proposals for arbitration, international mediation, the voracious British Empire, the largest empire in the world in the 19th century, could not satisfy its own greed. It was only the intervention of the United States of America in 1895 that forced the British to accept an arbitration. Although Venezuela entrusted the fate of its territory to the supposed goodwill of the United States, unfortunately, the United States was not acting as a mediator to help Venezuela, but rather to impose its own will across the entire continent and to force the British Empire to recognize it as the new power. This was essentially a revival of the Monroe doctrine. Not the 1823 doctrine, which was originally a defensive measure, but the version of 1895 which sought to impose US sovereignty over the entire hemisphere. The Treaty of Washington of 1897 and the fraudulent Paris Award of 1899 became for specialists in the matter, key milestones marking the moment when the United States began to replace the British Empire and the European powers across the entire continent. President Cleveland himself acknowledged this President of the United States in 1904 when he highlighted the great benefits of the 1899 award. And I quote, I hope there are but few of my fellow citizens who, looking back, do not recognize today the good that this episode in our history did for our nation. It established the Monroe Doctrine on a lasting foundation the eyes of the world, improving our standing in terms of the respect and regard of the peoples of all nations, in particular the Great Britain, end of quote. The fraudulent award, which will be addressed by our experts was imposed by the two most powerful nations in the world. This marked the climax of the infamous gunboat diplomacy and the treaties imposed by force in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Venezuela itself in 1902, just halfway between the 1899 award and the 1905 delimitation, was blockaded and bombarded by the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. In 1904, the United States threatened to invade Venezuela in a classic example of the well known policy of the Big Stick. Only those very ignorant of Venezuela's history or those who denigrate its history would claim now that our country should have acted at that time under the illusion of perfect equality among states. The reality is far more bitter. All of these experiences endured by our people have taught us to strive for peace, but always without expecting favors from large powers or miraculous results from rigged international arbitrations. This is what led to our tradition of not recognizing the jurisdiction of arbitral tribunals or courts of any kind when it comes to matters relating to our territorial integrity. This is why Venezuela does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice which was erroneously imposed in the 2020 judgment. It respectfully rejects its jurisdiction to hear and decide on this dispute. President the decolonization process that took place after the Second World War created an appropriate international framework in which both independent republics that had been stripped of their territories by the empires and colonized nations could have the opportunity to initiate claims for compensation or restitution for damages suffered at the hands of the great powers. The United nations and its Decolonisation Committee provided a platform for many countries so that they could begin in the context of international law and without the threat of force negotiations with imperial powers with the aim of restoring their historical territorial rights. Venezuela has been at the very forefront of the struggle around the decolonization of peoples worldwide and non autonomous territories worldwide, including its own. Therefore, it is very clearly an anti imperialist conduct. It is impossible now to deceive international public opinion by trying to portray Venezuela as a country that poses an existential threat to its neighbors. All the decolonization processes around the world, including that of Guyana, had the support of Venezuela. In 1962, our foreign minister Marcos Falcon Briseno, raised formally Venezuela's claim to the Guayana Cequiba region for the first time, specifically before the United Nations Decolonization Committee. And this claim led to negotiations resulting in the 1966 Geneva Agreement which remained in effect between Venezuela and guyana until in 2015 energy interest prompted a change in the Guyanese government's position. The Geneva Agreement is therefore a crucial instrument of decolonization. As Guyana gained its independence, Venezuela began to lay the groundwork for the return of its territory that had been colonized by the British Empire. The Geneva Agreement is a peace, an instrument of peace that encourages parties to find, through direct negotiation, a practical and satisfactory solution to their differences. This is the opposite of a court imposed decision where inevitably one party wins at the expense of the other's defeat. When the party is committed in the Geneva Agreement to overcome the disastrous legacy of colonialism within a framework of friendly and mutually beneficial relations. President, members of the Court. Allow me to be more precise. Despite Guyana's repeated assertions, the Geneva Agreement of 1966 remains the legal framework that governs this matter. This agreement expressly recognizes the existence of a territorial controversy relating to Guayana Sakiva. The territory is subject of dispute between the parties. As a result, the characterization by Guyana of an alleged threat to its territorial integrity or to its sovereign territory constitutes a flagrant misinterpretation and a deliberately misleading presentation of both the facts and the law. Guyana has no established title under threat. Rather, what we see is a territorial dispute, an unresolved dispute which is expressly recognized as such in the Geneva Agreement and which must be resolved in a manner that is mutually acceptable to both parties. On Monday, Guyana sought to reverse the clear terms of the Geneva Agreement, disregarding in this way more than six decades of bilateral practice, including the sustained negotiations and the good offices process, which were conducted under the auspices of the UN Secretary General. My question is, are we to understand then, that throughout those decades the Secretary General, acting within the framework agreed by the parties, was promoting the effective destruction of Guyana or the dismemberment somehow of its territory. When he stated that the objective of his good offices, as provided for in Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement, was to ensure a mutually satisfactory solution to the controversy and that in an effort to achieve this objective, creative options should be explored? Or is Guyana suggesting that its highest authorities, including Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, who participated actively in the processes established under the Geneva Agreement and stated that with goodwill on both sides, perhaps we can arrive at a mutually acceptable solution in which honor is preserved. End of quote. Was this being engaged in conduct intended to undermine the territorial integrity of their own country? I hope this is not what was intended to be conveyed on Monday. However, that is the inevitable implication of those statements. These propositions are, of course, untenable. Not only are they incompatible with the text and the purpose of the Geneva Agreement, they are also irreconcilable with the constant consistent practice of both parties over decades. The legal reality is clear. The agreement acknowledges the existence of the controversy and establishes a framework for its negotiated resolution. It has never supported and it doesn't support the narrative now being advanced by Guyana. Professor Zimmerman will elaborate on on this particular point this morning. Let me reiterate. It is impossible for the Geneva Agreement in its implementation to pose an existential threat to one of the parties. Claiming otherwise is simply an act of propaganda which must be publicly denounced. In fact, Venezuela's good faith and neighbourly spirit are clear in the joint development proposals that are extremely beneficial for Guyana. In 2009, for example, Venezuela and Guyana entered into a rice for oil swap agreement and that was renewed up until 2015. In that agreement, Venezuela purchased rice from Guyana at a price above market value and it sold its oil at a price below market value. Experts from the Inter American Development bank concluded that for Guyana the cost of its oil imports had gone down as had its total public debt considerably. That was thanks to the generous long term financing terms offered by the Petro Caribe agreement. Venezuela has never been an obstacle to Guyana's development as has been claimed in this very chamber. On the contrary, Guyana has benefited from Venezuela's solidarity policies which have also been offered to other countries in the Caribbean region. Venezuela can simply not be accused of not being a good neighbor. In 1982, Guyana's prime minister, Forbes Burnham, a great historical leader of that country and a signatory to the 1966 Geneva Agreement, proposed a definitive solution to the territorial controversy through a plan which was to be mutually beneficial for the economic development of the countries involving the construction of a hydroelectric project financed by Venezuela and the output of which would be used by both countries. Burnham stated, I quote, I would see an advantage in a long term contract for the supply of power to Venezuela coupled with a political arrangement which would remove from our relationship the nagging power issue of the border. In other words, I'd propose that simultaneously with the agreements for mutual cooperation relating to the Upper Mazaruni hydroelectric project and the supply of power to Venezuela, we should sign an accord which would lay at rest the border question. This evidence, ignored by those who seek to slander Venezuela, allows us to state two fundamental facts. Firstly, Venezuela is not was not the imperial annexationist monster that they try to portray before this tribunal trying to asphyxiate economic development. The Prime Minister of Guyana did not fear Venezuela. On the contrary, he had the vision to propose a project that would be mutually beneficial for for both countries within the spirit of The Geneva Agreement. Secondly, Prime Minister Burnham's proposal demonstrates that it is fake false to claim that the sole purpose of the agreement is to declare the nullity of the 1899 award. In fact, the Geneva Agreement provides a wide range of peaceful, mutually beneficial options that could be pursued if both parties were willing to comply with the agreement in good faith. Guyana presents itself as the true legitimate heir to British and Dutch territories. But the reality is that it is the beneficiary of colonial dispossession formalized through fraudulent arbitration. The Geneva Agreement seeks to correct this century old injustice. In conclusion, it's crucial to reaffirm the following points. Firstly, our historical experience has taught us that delegating vital matters of the Republic, two international judicial bodies has been detrimental to our sovereignty and our territorial integrity. As a result, Venezuela has never agreed to submit this controversy to the Court's jurisdiction. Secondly, Venezuela's historical rights are inalienable and Venezuela is determined to defend them peacefully. Thirdly, the Geneva Agreement arose from the historical dispossession suffered by Venezuela in 1899, and it aims to resolve the controversy through direct, peaceful and diplomatic means. Any decision, Number four, Any decision by the Court that affects the operation of the Geneva Agreement would hinder progress towards a mutually acceptable solution for the parties to that agreement. Agreement. The only option is to allow the agreement to fulfill its purpose and objective without impediments. Venezuela, number five, is committed to continuing to act in good faith in direct negotiations with Guyana to achieve a mutually beneficial agreement. President, Members of the Court, to conclude, we wish to send a message to our people who are listening attentively to Venezuela and its voice. For generations, our people have made enormous sacrifices to defend their independence, their sovereignty and their territorial integrity. We have come here to fulfill the mandate of defending our historic rights with serenity, respect and firmness. And we do so with the confidence that comes from our knowledge of our own history and the justice of our cause. We've come to the Hague with that same spirit with which we negotiated and subscribed the Geneva Agreement. The only instrument that will allow us to find a solution that is mutually satisfactory for all. This is a task for the entire nation. Let us walk firmly together in the same direction, knowing that, united and mindful of our civic duties, we will achieve our goals without impositions that could undermine our sovereignty as happened in 1899. For us and our neighbors, there is no alternative but a future of peace, diplomacy and prosperity. Together, we will achieve this goal. President, Members of the Court, during this morning's session, Venezuela will submit its arguments relating to the only legal instrument that defines the rights and obligations of the parties, the 1966 Geneva Agreement, which Guyana is deliberately ignored. During Monday's hearing, Professor Makani Mbengue will show how Guyana is seeking to divert attention from the true subject of the dispute by focusing on the 1899 arbitral award. After that, Professor Andreas Zimmerman will consider the interpretation legal effects of the Geneva Agreement. Professor Antonio Ramiro Brotons will conclude the morning session by establishing a link between the object and the purpose of of the 1966 Geneva Agreement and the historical circumstances that led to its conclusion. In the session this afternoon, Venezuela will respond to Guyana's arguments related to the alleged validity of the 1899 award. Venezuela will reiterate that its participation does not imply recognition of the Court's jurisdiction. Rather, this is the exercise of Venezuela's sovereign right to defence. Professor Dana Azaria will open the session and she will be followed by Professors Paolo Palchetti, Christian Tams and Jean Marc Touvenin. They will address Venezuela's historical position related to the invalidity of the award and the absence of any tacit or explicit waiver of its right to claim its nullity. President, members of the Court, thank you for your attention and I would request that Professor Mbenge be invited to take the floor.

I thank the agent of Venezuela for his statement. I now give the floor to Professor Makam Moise Mbengi. Sir, you have the floor.

Mr. President, distinguished members of the Court, it is an honor to appear before you once again on behalf of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as stated by Professor Moncada. I will now offer some remarks that will be essential to situate the position of Venezuela and in particular to describe the object of the controversy addressed by the Geneva Agreement on which your jurisdiction is claimed to be based. This is a matter that deplorably has been much blurred by Guyana earlier this week. Once the fog is lifted, what remains is clear. Guyana's case is built around an issue, the validity of the 1899 award. That is not to use the international law terminology or the Court's terminology. The real issue or the subject matter of this controversy, it never has been. From the very first line of its application, all Guyana asks is that you rubber stamp a discredited award, a piece of paper that both States have long chosen to set aside in favor of a mutually satisfactory solution. This flow in Guyana's case proceeds from one strategic choice, that of disregarding the Geneva Agreement and refusing to address its proper interpretation, an interpretation that is essential to understand that the Court has no role in the long standing dispute over the territory of Guyana. Essequiba. Mr. President, members of the Court, the real issue we are concerned with today is clearly delineated by Guyana and Venezuela when they agreed to conclude the Geneva Agreement. That real issue is the pursuit of a mutually satisfactory solution to the controversy generated by by the 1899 award. A solution that consigns this artifact of British imperialism to the past where it belongs and that shuts a way forward. This is the only proper meaning of the Geneva Agreement. It is as though, so far the only interpretation on the record. For the simple reason that Guyana has offered none. Professor d' Argent's remarks on Monday offered yet another illustration. There was no elucidation of how the agreement governs the controversy between Guyana and Venezuela. Instead, Professor d' Argent claimed that everything on this subject has already been said at earlier incidental stages of these proceedings. This approach is in line with Guyana's consistent attempts from the time of its application to divert the attention from the Geneva Agreement and the real issue it addresses. My role is to bring the argument back to the legal framework that Guyana has tried to avoid. And to do this, I shall discuss three points. First, I will highlight the fundamental importance of the real issue addressed by the Geneva Agreement, showing that it is the pursuit of a mutually satisfactory solution. Second, I shall turn to what Guyana has been most determined to ignore, the roots of the Geneva Agreement in the decolonization movement. Third, I will explain how the Geneva Agreement affected innovation, replacing an old and flawed framework with a new one. Let me turn to the fundamental importance of the real issue. Mr. President, distinguished members of the Court. On Monday we were taken by Professor Pele through the practices of 19th century arbitration. Professor Sands then took us into the worlds of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, of Verdi, of theater and magical realism. We were offered narratives. What was absent was any engagement with the instrument that actually governs this controversy, the 1966 Geneva Agreement. Not a word on its object and purpose, not a sentence on the obligation it imposes to seek a mutually satisfactory solution. Barely a mention of the decolonization movement that produced it. That silence is revealing. However vivid the storytelling, it cannot answer the question that lies at the heart of this case. What did Venezuela and Guyana agree to do in 1966? That is the real issue. So let's discuss it. I shall proceed in four steps. I will first establish that it is necessary to identify the real issue in Kazu. I will then demonstrate that the Court did not identify the real issue in its earlier judgment, leaving that question unresolved. This will allow me to emphasize that the real issue is and always was the pursuit of a mutually satisfactory solution between Guyana and Venezuela. I shall conclude by addressing Guyana's glaring failure to engage with this issue not only in its written submissions, but also on Monday in its oral pleadings. Mr. President, it is settled law that the Court must decide by itself the scope and profile of the case before it. And that applies even when, as in this case, the Court was not supposed to affirm that it does have jurisdiction. The Court is indeed required in the Court own words, I quote, to isolate the real issue in a case, to isolate the real issue in a case as the Court itself acknowledge. The determination of the real issue, I quote, is a matter of substance, of substance, not form. Crucially, determining the real issue or subject matter of a controversy should be done on an objective basis. I quote. Once again, the Court this is meant to diffuse a known risk that an applicant will present their case in the most favorable light and stretch the boundaries of what a given controversy is about, identifying the real issue objectively and by contrast, lessens the risk that an applicant mislead the Court in asserting that jurisdiction exists where there is none and attempts to focus on issues that are not part of the real issue agreed to, as regrettably happened here. In other words, the objective basis standard can lead to the conclusion that the controversy is different from what an applicant strategically alleges. Since, and as a matter of law, the Court cannot and should not be constrained by the allegations that Guyana are chosen to make. In particular, it must carefully ascertain whether Guyana's requests remain within the bounds of what the parties to the Geneva Agreement have sought to resolve. Guyana's claims cannot exceed, as they do, the framework established by the Geneva Agreement. Nor can the Court decide those matters. In summary and as Underlined in Azerbaijan vs Armenia, the court must, I quote, determine on an objective basis the subject matter of the dispute between the parties by isolating the real issue in the case. Mr. President, members of the Court, it is striking that the language I just quoted, a fixture of every contentious case in the Court's recent history, is absent from the Court's previous decisions. In the prison case, there is no equivalent language either. In other words, the Court has so far never attempted to identify the real issue in this case. While the Court used the term subject matter in the 2020 judgment, it was in terms disconnected from the careful identification of the real subject matter of the prison proceedings. Some members of the Court have actually rightly taken note that the Court has missed that step. Fortunately, the consequences of that lacuna are strictly limited. On Monday, Professor d' Argent tried to shift the focus to residicata. But resurrect attaches only to a prior judgment dispositive, and it extends only to what was actually decided expressly or by necessary implication. That is, as the court confirmed in its 2023 judgment, the relevant standard for reciticata in this respect. Venezuela, as said before, and says again today, that the Court should not have upheld its jurisdiction over Guyana's claims. But Even taking the 2020 judgment on its own terms, what the Court decided is jurisdiction and jurisdiction alone. It did not address the subject matter of the controversy. It made no determination whatsoever, expressly or by necessary implication, on what this case is actually about. The Court never reached any conclusion on this point. This failure needs now to be remedied. And to that end, the key distinction between the scope of the Court's jurisdiction and the subject matter of the controversy needs to be stressed. The two are not the same thing, jurisdiction and subject matter. So even on the most generous reading of the 2020 judgment, the question of what this Court may decide remains entirely open. A finding of jurisdiction is not a license to entertain whatever Guyana places before the Court. Take the Court's position that the validity of the 1899 award falls within the rationale material scope of its jurisdiction. Appoint Venezuela contest but accepts here only for the purpose of argument. Even on that basis, it certainly does not follow that the Court should resolve or even address the validity of the award. The 1899 award and its many flaws and inequities might be relevant. It may offer context. It is, after all, the wound the Geneva Agreement was designed to heal. But it certainly does not follow that the award should be permitted to stand in the way of a genuine resolution of the controversy between Guyana and Venezuela. Jurisdiction to entertain a question is not an obligation to answer it, and certainly not an obligation to answer it when doing so would actively defeat the very object and purpose of the underlying instrument governing the controversy over Guyana. Esekiba the real issue before the Court is not, never was and never will be the validity of the 1899 award. And in fact, the court anticipated this in 2020 when holding that a finding of invalidity alone would not settle the controversy. Yet the opposite of follows with equal force. Affirming the validity of the award would also leave the underlying controversy unresolved. Worst, it would leave the State's relationship irremaigably poisoned and reduce the Geneva Agreement to Nothing. A dead letter is promised of a fresh start, extinguished by a judicial endorsement of the colonial status quo. To avoid such a situation, one which would go against the basic tenets of the law of treaties, the Court needs to be cognizant of the real issue in this case, a point to which I turn now. What then, Mr. President, is the real issue in this case? The answer is plain. It is the pursuit of a namicable, practical and mutually satisfactory resolution of the controversy born of the unjust 1899 awards. This is what the Geneva Agreement requires, what its parties have consented to, and what the Court risks setting aside if it follows the path Guyana has strategically shattered. Professor Zimmerman will explain later this morning why a proper interpretation of the Geneva Agreement leads to this conclusion and this conclusion only. Text, context, and subsequent practice all point to the same direction. For now, I shall address what the identification of the real issue necessarily entails. First, while Venezuela has provided, and it will further provide, ample grounds to impugn the award, the question is ultimately beside the point. A judgment, a judgment that merely reaffirms the award's outcome, would repudiate everything that the Geneva Agreement is and stands for. It would reduce the Geneva Agreement to an empty shell and elevate a discredited colonial artifact above an international agreement concluded under the aegis, as I shall later recount, concluded under the aegis of the decolonization movement. For this is key. The agreement was explicitly designed to move beyond a binary adjudicative resolution and towards a negotiated, politically acceptable settlement. In practical terms, this means that a ruling from the Court that simply affirms the award would revive a framework the two states mutually abandoned six decades ago. Second, the real issue in this case, the fact that Guyana and Venezuela are committed to pursuing a mutually satisfactory solution, cast Guyana's claims in a new light. And what becomes patent is that Guyana's proposed approach is not just legally deficient, it is also deeply uncontainable because it seeks to perpetrate and entrench a repugnant set of asymmetries. Asymmetries of burdens, asymmetry of positions, asymmetry of outcomes, asymmetry of burdens. The Geneva Agreement stems from its party's inability, inability to agree as to the validity of the 1899 award, which is why they opted to give a new impetus to their negotiations through a mixed commission. A mixed commission of a diplomatic kind, not of a legal kind, not of a legal kind, proving that Guyana and Venezuela sought, and are still seeking, a practical and amicable settlement of the controversy not a legal winner take all outcome. Guyana's strategy, by contrast, places the burden fully Venezuela asymmetry of positions as noted by the court and individual judges. Even if Venezuela demonstrates the awards invalidity, that would not settle the case. Further issues would remain to be litigated, issues that Guyana would prefer to ignore since its benefits from the start the status quo. This is Precisely why in 1966, Guyana and Venezuela understood, with the clarity Guyana now seeks to obscure, they understood that a practical and mutually satisfactory negotiated solution was the only way forward. Finally, an asymmetry of outcomes Under Guyana's reading of the Geneva Agreement, the final settlement of the controversy can take one of two forms. Either Guyana is fully victorious and gains 100% of its claims as to Guyana Essequiba's territory, or that's the second form the parties will settle on a middle ground. Meaning that on Guyana's reading, no outcome under the Geneva Agreement could ever vindicate Venezuela's full and rightful sovereignty over the controversial territory. Preventing such outcomes was and is the raison d' etre of the Geneva Agreement. Because if it is not. If it is not, why was it ever concluded? In its pleadings so far, Guyana never offered any rationale for that agreement to even exist. Clearly, given the conflicting views held at the time, its object and purpose was not to uphold the status quo. And it was not either, as Professor Oral suggested on Monday, to create a new right to challenge the award. That has never been Venezuela's position. Once the Geneva Agreement was concluded, there was nothing left to challenge. The point of the agreement was, and is to find a way forward. Satisfactory solutions. Satisfactory solutions that both Guyana and Venezuela could accept. That is what the text says. The text of the Geneva Agreement, something Guyana might recall if it ever located its copy of the Geneva Agreement. Guyana's position is understandable. It is, after all, the lucky heir to a deeply revolting award in which it played no part. But Guyana is also the heir to an agreement that left that award behind in the hope of finding a just solution to a territorial controversy. It cannot claim the benefits of the Geneva Agreement while repudiating its obligations. Pacta sunt servanda Mr. President, distinguished members of the Court, as I have shown, identifying the real issue or subject matter of the controversy is critical. It should also be apparent that the Court has not yet done so. It follows that identifying the real issue in this case should lead to a clear and inevitable conclusion that the objective is and always has been to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution of the controversy, one that leaves behind the injustices created by the corrupt 1899 award. And yet, if one looked solely at Guyana's pleadings, one would have no inkling that there is such a thing as the Geneva Agreement and that it plays a role in the controversy. In its application, the agreement is treated as a mere procedural conduit, a vehicle for getting to this Court. It was only on Monday during these hearings that Guyana finally recalled the existence of the Geneva Agreement to a limited extent. Yet the feeble arguments brought to the fore by Professor d' Argjean on this point have failed to remedy Guyana's failure to engage with Venezuela's position. Professor d' Argent's submissions confirmed two things. First, Guyana treats the interpretation of the Geneva Agreement as a merely incidental issue, allegedly irrelevant at this stage of the proceedings. Second, and consequently, Guyana refuses to engage with the question of the true subject matter or real issue of the controversy. In fact, in its oral pleadings, Guyana fundamentally misread Venezuela's rejoinder and thus missed the mark. Guyana made it all about a challenge to this court's jurisdiction or to the earlier judgments. To be sure, Venezuela holds and will always hold, as Professor Moncada recalled, that the Court should never have upheld its jurisdiction over Guyana's claims. But this is not the argument that required an answer from Guyana, in line with Article 61 of the Rules of Court and Practice Direction. 6 the argument is that the Court omitted to identify the real issue in this case, in contrast with every other case, and that this omission should be remedied. Professor Darjean's comments were premised on a single idea that once the Court upholds jurisdiction on an issue, it binds itself absolutely and irrevocably to address and decide it. In his view. In the view of Professor d', Argent, jurisdiction is not a threshold but a command. Once crossed, the Court must proceed to the merits exactly as the applicant has framed them, irrespective of the real issue of the controversy and of the limits inherent to the judicial function. That is not, however, how international adjudication works. Jurisdiction opens the door. It does not relieve a court of the duty to ask where it should go. Still less does it compel the Court to decide an issue that, once properly identified, falls outside the controversy at stake. And even were one to accept Aguendo the court's 2020 finding that Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement confers jurisdiction, then that same instrument would also define the limits of what the Court is authorized to do. The Court cannot derive its competence from the Geneva Agreement and then exercise that competence in a manner that defeats the agreement and its very objective and purpose. In other words, regardless of Venezuela's steadfast position that the Court does not hold jurisdiction, the key argument, an argument that remains unanswered by Guyana, is that identifying the real issue in this case is one essential two still to be done and three once properly undertaken, decisive in showing that the Court has no role to play in this controversy. All this is why Guyana's contentions about revision are irrelevant. There is no fenouvo, there is no fenouveau, only a fait ancien the Geneva Agreement itself, despite Guyana's efforts to divert attention from it. And this is also why Venezuela, in its rejoinder, quoted from the Northern Cameron's case to stress that there are limits inherent in the judicial character of the Court's function. Allow me to quote the relevant paragraph. Even if the Court, when seized, finds that it has jurisdiction, the Court is not compelled in every case to exercise that jurisdiction. There are inherent limitations on the exercise of the judicial function which the Court as a Court of justice can never ignore. On Monday, Professor d' Argent sought to evade this point by focusing on another paragraph of Northern Cameroons and by distinguishing the case on its facts. But Venezuela does not rely on Northern Cameroons for a factual analogy. It relies on it for the broader and far more fundamental principle that there are circumstances in which the Court must stay its hand must stay its hand in order to preserve its judicial integrity. Those circumstances are present here in the Geneva Agreement. Guyana and Venezuela have agreed between themselves that what they seek is an amicable resolution of the controversy by way of negotiations. This is a goal that only they they, Guyana and Venezuela, not the Court, can achieve. Only them can achieve it through good faith engagement. A ruling on the validity of the 1899 award would not be conducive to such a resolution. It would do the opposite and freeze the territorial controversy. This deadlock is precisely what the Geneva Agreement was designed to move beyond. On Monday, Guyana tried to scare the Court into thinking that you might I quote Ouvris la porte a la Remy's encourse desantes non motive rend du tout Holland du dix ne viam cique. The classic and tired opened the floodgates argument. But this is entirely beside the point. Other 19th century awards were not superseded by a dedicated international instrument such as the Geneva Agreement. And so, apart from these short and misguided comments, the brunt of Guyana's oral submissions pertain to what Venezuela in the counter Memorial has described as its monomaniacal focus on the validity of the 1899 award. This focus remains a mystery. Yet the point remains. The Court could or can only give effect to and not redraft the Geneva Agreement, an instrument that aims at a mutually satisfactory resolution of the controversy. There is no scenario in which upholding the 1899 award, as Guyana is asking you to do, achieves that goal. Mr. President, members of the Court, after having clarified what the real issue is, allow me now to turn to a different but equally fundamental dimension of this case, a dimension that Guyana has once again carefully preferred to ignore. I refer, of course, to the Geneva Agreement's roots in the decolonization movement. On Monday, Professor d' Argent claimed not to understand why Venezuela had addressed this subject in his rejoinder. Well, let me repeat this focus on decolonization is needed because the Geneva Agreement roots in this framework are critical to properly assess what the parties to it had sought to accomplish through this instrument and the direction the controversy should take in the future. As recently put by a member of this Court, I quote, colonialism is a blemish on the history of humanity and indeed on the reputation of international law. And yet, I continue the quote, International law continues to respect normatively many of the legacies of colonialism. One could not find a better illustration of the unfortunate legacies of colonialism than this controversy between Guyana and Venezuela. Yet today, Guyana asked this Court to do what 1966 forbade, to lend the imprimatur of international justice to a wrong an empire sought to impose, a wrong Venezuela never accepted, and a wrong that the Geneva Agreement was concluded to extinguish decolonization. This felicitous period of human history that saw the liberation of countless peoples is therefore a critical consideration in this case. In what follows, I shall recount the historical background before demonstrating that the Geneva Agreement is a fruit of that period and should be interpreted accordingly. Let me come back to the 1960s. As the decade starts, the United nations adopts Resolution 1514, entitled Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which specifically condemns colonialism. This defining moment, to quote the Court, this defining moment represented a culmination for the principle of self determination of all peoples, which had been embodied in the UN Charter. That principle of self determination had always been embraced by Venezuela, including and in fact particularly with respect to Guyana. Venezuela has long called for its independence based on its, I quote, long standing anti colonial position dating back to its own struggle for sovereignty and independence, end of quote. Venezuela's stance was in step with that of its neighbors. For Latin America, the decolonization movement could not have come early enough. The few territories that remain in colonial hands were a blemish on a South American continent liberated from the Spanish and Portuguese empires a century prior. But the decolonization imperative was not and is not merely a question of colonial powers grabbing their luggage, their gunboats, and sailing away in the sunset. Instead, genuine decolonization also requires the rectification of historical injustices, including the restitution of territory or compensation for lost resources and the dismantling of the structures of colonial domination. Hence the statement from Venezuela's Minister of Foreign affairs when he presented the Geneva Agreement to Congress. I quote, at the twilight of the colonialist era, hope was rekindled that one day the injustice we had been victims of would be redressed. End of quote. Venezuela has kept that hope and keeps it to this day. Mr. President, against that historical background, I want to restate how the negotiations of this instrument, the Geneva Agreement, were guided by the spirit of the age and the ideals of decolonization. Indeed, the conclusion of the Geneva Agreement demonstrates a shared recognition among all parties that the 1899 award embodies the perversion of the nascent international justice mechanisms for imperial goals. This shared recognition is apparent from the attitude of the United Kingdom, Venezuela and Guyana in 1966 and when they executed the Port of Spain Protocol. If we look at the three main parties, Guyana, Venezuela and the United Kingdom, and at their motivations, what do we see? First, for the United Kingdom, in the face of increasing pressure to grant independence to its colonies, it was essential to establish a mechanism to address pre existing disputes and ensure a smoother transition. Opposition to independence not only was this consistent with the decolonization goals, but one should not lose track of the alternative scenario, namely that the UK could have simply insisted on the colonial borders and left it at that. That such a route was not taken with the Geneva Agreement means only that the colonial injustice was simply too stark. As for British Guyana, its participation in the Geneva Agreement as a party in its own right reflects the evolution of the principle of self determination, which mandated the involvement of the colonized people in decisions affecting their future. As a state about to secure its independence, Guyana had all the capacity necessary to assess the award, and its participation in the Geneva Agreement suggests recognition that a new pass for resolution was needed. It is a tragedy that Guyana has now forgotten this and changed its stance. A genuinely Looking at Venezuela, we see a country free at least from the colonial shackles in the first quarter of the 19th century and from the gunboat diplomacy that defined the following decades. Under These new circumstances, Venezuela could finally challenge, finally challenge the 1899 award. And it did so in keeping with the principles of the United Nations Charter, through peaceful means and negotiations. This explains why Venezuela later described the Geneva Agreement as, I quote, a formal agreement by which the three parties involved committed themselves to a political search for peaceful solutions to a dispute inherited from colonialism. End of quote. It was and is a crucial step in the process of Latin American decolonization. No interpretation of the Geneva Agreement. I insist. No interpretation of the Geneva Agreement. Ken Fairla, pass on this history, insisting, as Guyana now does, that the Geneva Agreement endorsed the status quo and the behavior of the British Empire is incompatible with the agreement's time and context. To quote Judge Hadok Abhishab in the frontier dispute case, this would, I quote, find in contemporary international law a retroactive legitimation whatever of colonialism as an institution. This does not have to be the agreement offers a path to remedy the wrongs of the colonial past and achieve a mutually satisfactory solution, a past that remains open. It is Guyana that has stepped off it. Mr. President, I have now demonstrated that the real issue in this case is the pursuit of a mutually satisfactory solution and that the decolonization context explains why the parties to the Geneva Agreement sought to leave the 1899 award behind. I turn now to my final point, how they did so. Venezuela's position is the following. The 1966 Geneva Agreement operates as a novation of the 1899 award. It extinguished that award as a source of binding legal entitlement and replaced it with a new framework built on negotiation, mutual satisfaction and equal sovereignty. It is that framework, and that framework alone, the Geneva Agreement, that governs Venezuela's and Guyana's rights and obligations today. To establish this, I shall first address the doctrinal foundations of innovation in international law. I shall then demonstrate that the Geneva Agreement satisfies every criterion the doctrine requires. Finally, I shall address the legal part consequences that flow from novation and which the Court is bound to respect before concluding. Mr. President, novation is one of the most venerable institutions of law. It is rooted in Roman law, and it describes the extension of a prior obligation by the substitution of a new one. Its status under international law is established, as Venezuela documented in its rejoinder. One example I want to emphasize is the one of the abiye arbitration of 2009, where a tribunal constituted under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration expressly recognized that even after an earlier determination, the parties concerned could consent to a new dispute resolution process. The Tribunal held that such consent would have the effect of, I quote, reopening questions that had been accepted as final and binding, thus novating the issues for decisions, end of quote. This is exactly what the Geneva Agreement purported to achieve and what it did in fact achieve. The practical consequences are plain. Novation extinguishes the original framework entirely, leaving in its place only the new one. Any pre existing obligations become moot and cannot be revived. Now, as a matter of international law, novation may occur if three requirements are satisfied. First, there must be a pre existing legal obligation. Second, there must be a new obligation having a substantively different content. Third, there must be a clear and unambiguous intention on the part of all relevant parties to substitute the new obligation for the old one. Mr. President, these three requirements are satisfied in this case. Let me start with the first one. To begin with, the prior framework. To begin with the prior framework was the 1899 award. That award purported, per the Treaty of Washington, to constitute a full, perfect and final settlement of the boundary between Venezuela and British Guyana. In its written pleadings and consistent with its long standing position, Venezuela has demonstrated that the award was procured by fraud. But even assuming aguindo that the award were valid, Venezuela and Guyana subsequently agreed to replace it. They agreed to replace it and that agreement is what now governed their relationship in relation to that matter. The award therefore generated the pre existing obligation that both states sought to replace. The first requirement is satisfied. In challenging this evidence on Monday morning, however, Professor d' Argent offered the court a syllogism. A syllogism major premise. Novation requires an obligation to replace minor premise. A null award produces no obligation. Conclusion. Venezuela, which says the award is null, cannot invoke novation. He said that Venezuela case, and I quote, a donc affectable. Mr. President, the syllogism is elegant, but it is wrong. First, novation only requires a pre existing legal framework, whatever its validity, to be treated as the object of substitution. The parties to the Geneva Agreement plainly understood themselves to be replacing something the framework that had governed. Although with much protest from Venezuela. The boundary question since 1899, whether that framework was valid, voidable or void in Venezuela's eyes is respectfully beside the point. Second, and most tellingly, Guyana's entire case rests on the proposition that the award produced obligations binding on the parties to this day. Indeed, Professor d' Argent himself, only minutes before mounting his novation objection, invoked a permanent court's language to insist that the award establish, I quote, a situation at law once and for all and with binding force as between the parties. End of quote. But Guyana cannot have it both ways. It cannot rely on the awards binding force to defeat Venezuela's claim of nullity and then strip the award of that very binding force to defeat Venezuela's argument of novation. One of those positions must Yield. In truth, Mr. President, the doctrine of novation does not invite the syllogism Professor Darjean has proposed. It asks a simpler, more pragmatic question properly suited to relation between sovereign states. Did the parties. Did the parties, by clear and unambiguous agreement, decide to replace one framework with another? In 1966, Venezuela, Guyana and the United Kingdom answered that question in the affirmative. Second, the Geneva Agreement created obligations that have no parallel in the 1899 award or in any prior instrument. Let me identify five key elements of novelty to prove that there is a new, substantively different obligation. First, the governing standard was transformed with the Geneva agreement. Under the 1989 award, the boundary was fixed. There was nothing to negotiate, nothing to Satisfy. Under Article 1 of the Geneva Agreement, both Venezuela and Guyana became bound to seek, I quote, satisfactory solutions for the practical settlement of the controversy. Second element of novelty. At the procedural level, the Geneva Agreement created a new structured process for resolving the controversy. Article 2 established a mixed commission with a substantive mandate, while Article 4 built upon that foundation to channel the negotiations through a progressive sequence of largely diplomatic means. These are the means in which Venezuela and Guyana placed their hopes in 1966 and the means in which Venezuela continues to place its hopes today. Third element of novelty. Article 5's provisions, whereby no acts or activities during the agreement could create claims to sovereignty or prescription, confirmed that the parties understood themselves to be operating in a new legal space where rights remained open and had to be resolved through negotiation. Fourth element of. Of novelty. And most significantly, the parties to the Geneva Agreement replaced finality with indeterminacy. They chose to subject the boundary to a fresh process of mutual determination. Fifth element of novelty. One should consider what did not happen with the Geneva Agreement, which would have been for the United Kingdom to just ignore Venezuela's allegations of fraud, wash its ends of the whole affair and let the newly independent Guyana inherit the original framework. Instead, what we have is an international instrument that positively provides in its article 8 that Guyana shall become a part of to the new framework upon independence. As such, the second criterion for novation, the creation of a substantively different obligation, is satisfied too. Let me now come, Mr. President, to the third criterion. An unambiguous intent to novate. The intention to novate emerges from every available source of evidence, every available source of evidence. It emerges from the text of the agreement. Article 1 refers to the controversy as something unresolved. It creates an obligation to seek satisfactory solutions, not to implement an existing one. The entire architecture of the Geneva Agreement presupposes that the status of the boundary is open, not closed. The intention to novate emerged from Venezuela's subsequent practice. The intention to novate emerges from Guyana's own practice. For more than five decades, Guyana did not invoke the 1899 award before any international forum. Instead, it engaged in negotiations, in good offices, processes, and in other mechanisms established by the Geneva Agreement. 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, as illustrated by several examples reviewed in Venezuela's. Therefore, even the final criterion for novation, unambiguous intent, is clearly satisfied. Mr. President, once novation is established, its consequences are unavoidable and absolute. To begin with, Venezuela has consistently argued without fail that the Court lacks jurisdiction over this controversy. The Court nevertheless upheld its jurisdiction. In his 2020 judgment, Venezuela respectfully maintained that it should not have done so and reserves its position on the matter. But even leaving that aside, the innovation effected through the Geneva Agreement precludes, precludes the Court from adjudicating the territorial controversy. The real issue before it, on the basis Guyana has presented. To do so would be to give effect to the 1899 award through the back door of jurisdiction, having abandoned it through the front door of the merits. International law does not permit that operation. Second, Guiana has argued, and continues to argue, as it did on Monday during Professor Oral's pleadings, that Venezuela acquiesced in the 1899 award and is stopped from challenging it. Venezuela contests both the facts and the law of that argument, and Professor Tuvner will address the matter in detail. But the fact is that innovation occurred, and that means that any acquiescence argument is moot. Innovation creates a clean slate. A clean slate. Rights and differences that accrued under the old framework cannot survive the transition to the new one unless they are expressly preserved in the new instrument, and they were not. Guyana's acquiescence argument, therefore, cannot succeed. Even in its own terms, it addresses the wrong legal framework. Mr. President, there is a final point to address. Before I conclude there is a final point to address because it goes to the fundamental character of of the Geneva Agreement, which mandates its parties to seek a mutually satisfactory solution. That bilateral obligation is the cornerstone of the entire framework. Yet Guyana's case is structurally incapable of honoring it. If the Court upholds the award, Guyana obtains everything. Everything. This is not a satisfactory solution. If the Court does not uphold the award and Guyana refuses to come back to the negotiating table, neither state advances and the controversy is left to fester. That would not be honoring the Geneva agreement either. Mr. President, distinguished members of the Court, I come to my conclusion. The Court knows very well that the legacy of colonialism makes for hard cases. But it also knows that this legacy cannot and should not be ignored in keeping with the goals and principles of the decolonization movement. There is a direct precedent for this in the Chagos advisory opinion. In the Chagos advisory opinion, the Court rightly found that the 1965 Lancaster House Agreement, which had detached the Chagos archipelago from Mauritius, was incompatible with the principle of self determination. The Court reached that conclusion notwithstanding the fact that Mauritian representatives had participated in the negotiation of the Lancaster House Agreement because the conditions of colonial coercion under which it had been concluded vitiated any pretense of genuine consent. It might be said that the 1899 award is different. That it was the product of arbitration, a legal process, and that in that process Venezuela was a participant. But the form of the colonial wrong. The form of the colonial wrong is irrelevant. Whether dispossession is achieved by direct governmental decree, as in Chagos, or through a tribunal corrupted by imperial influence, the result is the same. Territory is wrested from a state through the exercise of colonial power. Dressed in legal clothing to lend it an air of legitimacy it does not deserve. In truth, the 1899 award is the more egregious case. What happened in Paris was the weaponization of the nascent machinery of international arbitration. An institution built to deliver justice between equals and its perversion into an instrument of imperial expropriation. The result is, as generation of scholars have documented and as Venezuela will demonstrate this afternoon, bore the hallmarks of colonial imposition rather than legal adjudication. When Guyana's CO agent told this court in 2020 that international law spoke, I quote, international law spoke on 3rd October 1899, he invited the Court to treat that moment as an early triumph of the rule of law, yet glossed over what kind of international law that was. It was the law of Empire, administered by empire's appointees for empire's benefit. If the Court found the Lancaster House Agreement incompatible with self determination despite the participation of Mauritian representatives. How much less can an 1897 treaty concluded entirely over the heads of the colonized peoples on both sides? How this treaty, or a deeply revolting arbitral award, the poison fruit of a poison tree, claim enduring legitimacy? How. How the Geneva agreement was the two states answer to this history? Where the 1899 award imposed a boundary dictated by imperial compromise, the agreement substituted a framework built on negotiation in line with the principles of the United Nations Charter. It shattered a different path, one of negotiation, mutual satisfaction, genuine consent between sovereign equals. That path must not be foreclosed. That, Mr. President, is the real issue in this case. This concludes my presentation. I thank you for your kind attention and patience and kindly ask you to invite Professor Zimmerman to the podium. But I guess it will happen surely, after a break. Thank you.

I thank Professor Mbenge. Before I give the floor to the next speaker, the court will indeed observe a break of 50 minutes. The hearing is suspended.

It's.

Please be seated. The sitting is resumed. I now give the floor to Professor Andre Zimmerman to address the court. You have the floor, sir. Merci, Monsieur le president. Mon motel accour. It is, as always, an honor to appear before the court. I will now address in detail the content and notably the impact of the Geneva Agreement. In the current proceedings, I will show that it is the Geneva Agreement legally binding on both Guyana and Venezuela, which provides the agreed and indeed only way forward to reach a mutually acceptable, satisfactory solution for the controversy between Guyana and Venezuela. For the Court before doing so. I cannot but note, however, that to my regret, counsel for Guyana had almost nothing, nothing of substance to say on the content of the Geneva Agreement. Neither Monsieur le Professor d' Argent, nor indeed Professor Oral did therefore act in accordance with Article 60 of the Court's Rules and Practice Direction. 6. Rather, Monsieur Le Professor d' Argent merely claimed that Venezuela was trying to, quote, rewrite the Genius agreement, end quote. A striking accusation to make given that he himself did not quote a single substantive provision of the agreement in support of his own reading and claiming that its sole effect is to allow for a discussion on the validity of the 1899 award. Professor Oralintern either misunderstanding or misrepresenting Venezuela's line of argument, simply stated that the Geneva Agreement did not grant Venezuela, quote, a new right to challenge the 1899 award, end quote. This, I might say, blatant refusal by Guyana to engage meaningfully with the content of the Geneva Agreement is, to say the least, telling for two reasons. For Guyana, the Geneva Agreement seems to consist of nothing, nothing but the alleged Compromise clause of Article 4, paragraph 2. Of the eight speakers Guyana fielded, only one. One addressed the Geneva Agreement and his treatment then glossed over its substantive content entirely. Accordingly, Guyana brought the case on the basis of the Geneva Agreement, but then simultaneously refuses to engage with the legal obligations that follow from it. For Guyana, Guyana has thus consistently and up to last Monday, completely disregarded the substantive parameters contained in the Geneva Agreement that ought to lead to a peaceful solution of the controversy which Guyana brought before the Court in the first place. But let me state at the outset, Guyana cannot have its cake and eat it too. Or to use the word of Monsieur Le Professor Darjon, it is Guyana's, not Venezuela's. It's Guyana's commitment to the Geneva Agreement that is merely, quote, fictitious and purely formal. End quote. And that, Mr. President, members of the Court, is the fundamental difference between the two cases. Venezuela's case rests on the substance of the Geneva Agreement. Guyana's rests on a single procedural clause within it, but without support, as I will show by its substance. What is more, Guyana, by not engaging in the substantive interpretation of the Geneva Agreement, implicitly acknowledged that it had 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 and which I will now further develop. As I will demonstrate, a bona fide interpretation of the Geneva Agreement can only lead to one result, namely that by concluding the Geneva Agreement, the Parties wanted to set aside the issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award. Instead, they wanted to establish a process leading to a mutually acceptable solution for the substance of their boundary dispute where the boundary lies, and to do so not on the basis of the 1899 award, but irrespective of it. And it is this overarching goal that the Parties wanted to reach by concluding the Agreement. Professor Mbenge has already led you through the circumstances leading to the conclusion of the Geneva Agreement and notably its roots in the process of decolonization. What is more, he has also demonstrated that the Parties, by concluding the Geneva Agreement, provided for innovation of the pre existing legal framework, starting on a new path to a mutually acceptable solution to their overall boundary controversy. And my task now is to demonstrate that this goal of the Geneva Agreement, namely to bring about a resolution of the territorial controversy as a whole, is the only conclusion allowed by a thorough engagement with the Agreement's drafting history, its wording, its object and purpose, as well as by the subsequent agreed practice of Guyana and Venezuela in relation to the Geneva Agreement an engagement with the content of the Geneva Agreement Guyana wanted to avoid at all costs, it seems to me. And to that end, let me start by addressing the drafting history of the Geneva Agreement. Already prior to the conclusion of the Geneva Agreement, Venezuela and the United Kingdom had discussed practical solutions to the over overall territorial dispute at the outset of the negotiations in 1965. There had been a debate then as to the scope and goal of these negotiations. The United Kingdom's initial position had been that the talks ought to only encompass a documentary view of the process that had led to the 1899 award. Venezuela, however, insisted that that the agenda be changed. Accordingly, Venezuela proposed a new wording for the agenda of the forthcoming negotiations as confirmed by agenda item two, namely that the negotiations ought to seek solutions for a practical settlement of the overall boundary controversy. As such, it is important to note that the United Kingdom ultimately agreed, as you can see, to the inclusion of this item as had been proposed by Venezuela and in line with this agreed agenda, the parties then met in London in December 1965. And already during these meetings, the parties considered various substantive solutions to the dispute that extended far beyond the question of the validity of the award. Such propositions included, inter alia, an agreement which, similar to the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, would have kept the legal status of the disputed territory in limbo or a possible joint administration of the disputed area. Remarkably, the British record of the exchange confirms that such joint administration had been proposed by the UK itself rather than by Venezuela. And following these meetings, and in preparation for the negotiations that then culminated in the conclusion of the Geneva Agreement, the British Ambassador confirmed that, and I quote, neither Lord Walston nor any other representative of Her Majesty's Government has stated that the Geneva Conference will not discuss the Venezuelan claim over the Guyana Essequiba, end quote. The drafting history does prove that the parties by the end of the day decided to leave the issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award behind, turn the page and start a new chapter in the resolution of their boundary dispute. Accordingly, they explicitly decided to address the overall border controversy in their upcoming negotiations and hence later also, as we will see in the Geneva Agreement, the content of which I will now discuss in detail. Members of the Court, let me start with the very wording as usual of the Geneva Agreement and first, its very title. The agreement is referred to as the quote, agreement to resolve the controversy between Venezuela and the United Kingdom over the frontier between Venezuela and British Guiana over the frontier between the parties. In other words, the Geneva Agreement was intentionally not titled Agreement to resolve the controversy over the validity of the arbiter award of 1899. That's not what the party chose. Had the parties indeed wanted to focus in the agreement on the issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award, they would have certainly chosen a title reflecting such a such a limited understanding. Yet the parties intentionally opted for a significantly broader title over the frontier. This is confirmed a contrario by a contemporaneous agreement concluded in 1957 between Honduras and Nicaragua relating to the award handed down by the King of Spain in 1906, of which the Court Court is obviously aware at first glance. The similarities are striking and Guyana itself last Monday claimed once again that both cases raised very similar issues. But, but, and this is an important but this 1957 agreement, concluded only a few years prior to the Geneva Agreement, specifically referred to, as you can see, to quote, the disagreement existing with respect to the Orbital Award handed down by His Majesty the King of Spain in 1906, end quote. It is beyond doubt that Venezuela and the United Kingdom, when negotiating the Geneva Agreement, were obviously fully aware of this earlier agreement, which this very court had not only dealt with during several weeks sitting in 1960, but had also rendered a judgment in this very year 1960, just six years prior to the conclusion of the Geneva Agreement. Had Venezuela and the United Kingdom, when concluding the Geneva Agreement, indeed wanted to settle the question of the invalidity of the 1899 award rather than to settle or find a path for the settlement of the bilateral frontier contract controversy? As such, they would have certainly chosen the same language. Honduras, Nicaragua, two other countries from the very same region had used just some years ago. They had Guyana or the UK and Venezuela. They had that example available to them. And yet they deliberately opted for a much broader formula. Put otherwise, by concluding the Geneva Agreement, the United Kingdom and Venezuela aimed at settling the overall boundary controversy rather than to decide, quote, the disagreement existing between them with respect to the arbitral award, end quote. To use different formula used by Honduras in Nicaragua. And the same holds true when it comes to the Geneva Agreement's preamble. The preamble of the Geneva Agreement provides unequivocally that the agreement was specifically concluded to resolve, quote, any. Any outstanding controversy between the United Kingdom and British Guyana on the one hand and Venezuela on the other. Any outstanding controversy. Let me reiterate. The Geneva Agreement jointly approved aim was to resolve any outstanding controversy. Had the parties wanted to concern themselves instead with the specific issue of the the Orbital Award, they would have said so, choosing a wording that would have reflected in the Preamble this limited understanding. What is more, this overall controversy was to be settled again according to the Agreement's preamble, quote, in a manner acceptable to both parties, end quote, to both parties. Yet, to state the obvious, deciding the issue of the invalidity or the invalidity of the award could never be acceptable to both parties, as it would either unilaterally favor Guyana or Venezuela. Accordingly, the Geneva Agreement intends to reach a mutually acceptable negotiated agreement. Since the parties, as has been shown by Professor Mbenge, and this was indeed confirmed by Council for Guyana on Monday, the parties were very much aware of the fact that that no agreed conclusion could be reached as to the invalidity of the 1899 award. And this understanding has in fact also been shared by this Court, which stated that, quote, the Geneva Agreement is entitled agreement to resolve the controversy over the frontier between Venezuela and British Guiana, and its preamble states that it was concluded to resolve that controversy. And and according to the Preamble, this attempt must be undertaken, quote, in conformity with the agenda, with the agenda that was agreed for the governmental conversations concerning the controversy between Venezuela and the United Kingdom over the frontier with British Guiana. And this now brings me to Article 1 of the Geneva Agreement, and there multiple components stand out. First, it is no coincidence that the parties refer to the controversy between Venezuela and the United Kingdom as the Court is aware and has stated, quote, it was already Article or it was already Article 4 of the 1897 Washington Treaty, which had used the term controversy when referring to the originally boundary dispute that was to be submitted to the Orbital Tribunal established under the said 1897 Washington Treaty. To state the obvious, the 1897 Washington Treaty had been concluded prior to the 1899 award. The Washington Treaty had thus been concluded well before any dispute as to the invalidity of said award could have even arisen. Accordingly, the parties of the 1897 Washington Treaty, the same parties as those of the Geneva Agreement, by using the term controversy in 1897, could have only referred to the boundary controversy to the boundary issue as such. And this by necessary implication confirms that the controversy meant to be settled by the Geneva Agreement. The same controversy is not the dispute relating to the invalidity of the 1899 award. Rather, the controversy already addressed in 1897 to be settled is the overall bilateral boundary controversy in toto. Had the parties in concluding the Geneva Agreement, wanted to refer to the invalidity of the arbitrary in the Geneva Agreement, it would have been expected, if not mandatory, to use the more common term of dispute or in Spanish differento. Yet the parties did not they used the term controversy of the 1897 Washington Treaty and this conclusion is further supported second by the fact that the parties understood the controversy to be settled, as you can see as as the one that has arisen as the result of the Venezuelan contention that the award of 1899 is null and void. This wording underscores that the parties thus aimed to leave the Abdel deadlock behind. Instead, they wanted to focus on solving the overall boundary question as such and to do so by way of negotiations. Had that not been the case, the parties they could have formulated Article 1 as follows. Quote A mixed Commission shall be established with the task of resolving the controversy between Venezuela, Venezuela and the United Kingdom as to the validity of the arbitrary award of 1899 about the frontier between Guyana and Venezuela. They could have done so, but they did not formulate Article 1 in that manner. Third, Article 1 Geneva Agreement entrusted the mixed Commission quote with the task of seeking satisfactory solutions for the boundary controversy at the parties wanted the various settlement mechanisms established by the Geneva Agreement to simply decide upon the nullity of the 1899 award. It would have been possible and indeed most natural for the parties to spell this out. Instead, the reference to seeking satisfactory solutions implies that the mandate for the various mechanisms established by the agreement was not to determine the award's validity. After all, the very term of seeking a resolution to a controversy implies an open ended future looking process, contrary to merely making a backward looking finding on the current legal status of a by then 60 year old orbital award. Fourth, the notion of satisfactory and mutually acceptable solutions used by the parties in Article 1 further implies that a negotiated result was to be reached that would allow with the interests of both sides, and this necessarily presupposes a compromise and excludes any possibility of a judicial finding on the validity of the award. As such finding could per definitionem not provide for a mutually satisfactory result. That the Geneva Agreement's intention is not to reach a binary solution as to the validity versus the nullity of the award is further confirmed by the fact that Article 1 refers to the goal to find satisfactory solutions soluciones satisfactorias to the controversy. The parties thus deliberately refer to satisfactory solutions in the plural. Had the parties wanted to focus on the invalidity of the award, it would have been logical and indeed mandatory to instead refer to the goal of reaching a satisfactory solution solution satisfactoria in the singular. This issue is closely related, fifth to the requirement to seek a practical settlement of the dispute. But what constitutes then a practical settlement? It is this court's own jurisprudence that provides guidance on the matter in the Polish Postal Service. In Danzig Advisory Opinion, the PCIJ had to deal with a very similar case. It concerned the relationship between a 1922 decision of the High Commissioner of the League of Nations in Danzig and the subsequent agreement reached in 1923 between the Free City of Danzig and Poland. As in the case at hand, a dispute arose between between Poland and Dantzig concerning this 1922 decision of the High Commissioner. Accordingly, Poland and Dantzig concluded an agreement which was, just like the Geneva Agreement, meant to supersede said previous decision. The agreement set out the parameters on how to solve the dispute between Poland and Danzig, irrespective Irrespective of the nature of the previous decision by the High Commissioner. The only but fundamental fundamental difference between the Polish Danzig Agreement on the one hand and the Geneva Agreement on the other is that the Polish Danzig Agreement made it clear in its Clause three that, and I quote, this practical settlement of the question in no way changes the legal position. End quote. Let me recall that the terminology practical settlement used then by Poland and Danzig is word by word identical with the terminology used in the Geneva Agreement. Yet Poland and Danzig did think it necessary to include a savings clause by adding the words in no way changes the legal position into the 1923 agreement. They Poland and Danzig did so in order to safeguard any possible legal effect of the decision of the Danzig High Commissioner. Had the parties not done so, their practical settlement would have superseded the 1922 decision of the High Commissioner. For Dantzig, the Geneva Agreement, however, unlike the Dantzig and Poland agreement, does not contain such a savings clause and it lacks it on purpose. Obviously, Venezuela and the United Kingdom could have also inserted a savings clause in the Geneva Agreement akin to Clause 3 of the 1923 Agreement between Poland and Danzig. They could have thereby similarly provided that the practical settlement envisaged by the Geneva Agreement quote in no way changes the legal position, end quote as to the effects of the 1899 award. Put otherwise, by not including such a savings clause, Venezuela and the United Kingdom, unlike Poland and Danzig, decided to have the outcome of the 1899 arbitrary proceedings on which they held irreconcilable views superseded by the search for a negotiated solution to be reached by the parties parties. Thus, Venezuela and the United Kingdom opted for a practical settlement overriding any possible race judicata effect of the 1899 award. Assuming for the sake of argument that there's ever been one in the first place. Given the nullity of the award, the parties of the Geneva Agreement thus deliberately opted for a new start, constituting, as Professor Mbenge has shown, innovation of their legal relationship. The parties, in stark contrast to Poland and Danzig, were thus willing to replace the 1899 award on which they held fundamentally divergent and not compatible positions, with a new practical settlement, whatever legal status the 1899 award might hold. Mr. President, members of the Court, let me now address Article 2, paragraph 3 of the Geneva Agreement. This provision foresees that, quote, any individual matter under consideration, end quote, may be discussed by experts. This again implies that there exists a wide range of matters that form part of the overall controversy to be considered under the Geneva Agreement rather than the one that Guiana wants you to to believe. Moreover, the Fact that Article 2 Geneva Agreement refers to, quote, experts to assist the Mixed Commission end quote, hints at work to be done by cartographers, geologists or experts of a similar kind that can assist in delimiting and demarcating a boundary anew. As such, any determination concerning the validity of an arbitrary award as being a purely legal issue in nature does not require any such experts. The necessity of further experts thus presupposes discussions that extend beyond the competences and knowledge of the members of the Dispute Settlement Mechanism itself. This thereby once again confirms that the overall aim of the Geneva Geneva Agreement was not and is not to decide upon the invalidity of the 1899 award. Members of the Court, Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement reconfirms the interpretation I just discussed. It outlines the further dispute settlement process should the Mixed Commission fail to complete its task. For 1. Article 4, paragraph 1 refers to a quote, full agreement for the solution of the controversy, end quote. Should the Mixed Commission fail to do so, it shall refer quote any outstanding questions. It's again the plural that is being used to the Governments of Guyana and Venezuela. If, however, the controversy to be solved by the Geneva Agreement as submitted by Guyana had been meant to refer to the invalidity of the 1899 AN award, there could have only been one single outstanding unresolved question by the end of the negotiations, namely the very issue of the awards nullity or validity. The fact that the parties made reference to any outstanding questions in the plural, therefore presupposes a multiplicity multiplicity of issues on which the Mixed Commission might not agree on on and not the single issue of the invalidity of the award. The notion of outstanding questions accordingly obviously refers to the issue of resolving the Oval Boundary controversy as such and how to delimit the boundary between the two countries in order to reach a mutually acceptable solution, and this result is then confirmed by Article 4, paragraph 2 of the Geneva Agreement on which your jurisdiction is allegedly based. Article 33 UN Charter mentioned in Article 4, paragraph 2 makes reference to negotiation, mediation and conciliation as possible means to solve a given dispute. Negotiation, however, entails a process, as we were told in your jurisprudence, where either party may not insist upon their own respective position without contemplating any modification of it. By making reference to negotiations through the proxy of Article 33 of the Charter, the parties to the Geneva Agreement must have thus necessarily contemplated modifications to their respective positions. Modifications to their positions the determination as to the invalidity of an orbital award does by its very nature, however, constitute a legal question par excellence. It can only be decided in a binary manner. Either it's valid or it's not valid. The issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award is therefore not in and by itself capable of settlement by negotiation. By indirectly referring to negotiation in Article 4, paragraph 2, the parties of the Geneva Agreement must have therefore necessarily envisaged a solution that sets aside the issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award and mutatis mutandis. The same considerations apply to the implicit references in 4, 2 to the concepts of mediation and good offices which are also found in Article 4, paragraph 2 of the agreement. The Geneva Agreement accordingly aims at at a satisfactory and mutually acceptable solution to the overall territorial controversy. Any determination on the invalidity of the 1899 award would, however, necessarily, as I have shown, unilaterally favor one of the Parties. It therefore cannot constitute a mutually acceptable solution as prescribed by the Geneva Agreement and any such determination either way. Either way would thus contravene the very object and purpose of the Geneva agreement. Mr. President, members of the Court, this understanding of the Geneva Agreement as a forward looking, future oriented, practical instrument meant to solve the boundary issue at large instead of as a backward looking instrument. Freezing and perpetuating the bilateral conflict is further supported by the subsequent practice of both parties, starting with the work of the Mixed Commission. It is particularly telling that within the framework of the Mixed Commission, Venezuela and Guyana substantively discussed how to reach a mutually acceptable overall solution to their boundary controversy. Already in the mixed commission's first report, the then Guyanese representative Mr. Shahabuddin stated that Guyana is, quote, not insensible to the real nature, the real nature of the claim being put forward by Venezuela. This understanding by Guyana or the representative of Guyana of the Geneva Agreement was not Incidental rather, it was consistently confirmed throughout the Commission's work. Notably, the Mixed Commission established a Sub Commission whose mandate was to, quote, study possible areas of cooperation between Venezuela and Guyana for the financing and carrying out by them of plans of economic development, end quote. This confirms that from the very outset the Parties used the Geneva Agreement as a framework to address the border controversy. As such, they took it simply for granted in their subsequent agreed practice that the mandate of the Mixed Community was meant to actively seek a substantive solution to the overall territorial controversy. Guiana and Venezuela thereby jointly confirmed their shared understanding that the Geneva Agreement generally and its Article 4 in particular were meant to bring about a solution to their overarching territorial controversy as to where the boundary lies. And this is further confirmed by a separate memorandum which Guiana added to the final report adopted by the mixed commission in 1970. In it, Guyana once more drew attention to its proposal to provide for a special development program for Guyana in Venezuela. Notably, this development program proposed by Guyana would have included the dispute territory and was to be implemented through multinational cooperation with the aim that, quote, such program should be accepted as the solution into the substantive problem, end quote. This once again confirms two things. First, Guyana itself was seeking a substantive territorial solution within the framework of the Geneva Agreement rather than solving the issue of the nullity of the award. Second, Guyana was open to the idea of a shared development of the disputed territory. Guyana thereby accepted Venezuela's position that the scope of the Mixed Commission's mandate, as established by Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement on which the Court bases its jurisdiction, relates to substantive issues and the Terrierial dispute. As such, members of the court in 1970, Guyana and Venezuela independent Guyana and Venezuela concluded the Port of Spain Protocol, an instrument which I note in passing. Guyana did not even mention in once during a full day of pleadings on Monday 1970. With it with the Port of Spain Protocol, the Parties reconfirmed that in line with the previous Geneva Agreement, they continued to seek a mutually acceptable negotiated solution to their boundary controversy. Again using the very same terms as the Geneva Agreement to which I've already alluded to in detail, Guyana didn't try to change the wording. The Parties did so in full. The Parties did so in full conscience that the mandate of the Geneva Agreement had at times been contentious during the negotiations of the Mixed Commission. Still, the parties of the Port of Spain Protocol in 1970 deliberately decided to opt for the previous broad wording which reflected Venezuela's position. Put otherwise, the Parties once again did not refer to their controversy as being one related to the validity of the 1899 award, but as one concerning their overall territorial controversy. Besides, while Article 3 of the Port of Spain Protocol suspended the applicability of the Geneva Agreement, it also provided that once the Port of Spain Protocol was to cease to be in force, the functioning of Article 4 Geneva Agreement would resume, quote, unless the Government of Guyana and the Government of Venezuela have first joined jointly, declared in writing that they have reached full agreement for the solution of the controversy referred to in the Geneva Agreement, end quote. And this reconfirms Guyana's acceptance of Venezuela's interpretation of the Geneva Agreement, namely that the party's continued aim was to reach a full, that is overall, agreement for the whole of the boundary controversy between them as such. And this understanding of what the Port of Spain Protocol and the underlying Geneva Agreement were all about was explicitly supported by then Guyanese Prime Minister Burnham on the day of the signing of the Port of Spain Protocol. He construed that instrument as a means to resolve, quote, all differences between us, meaning between Guyana and Venezuela, all differences. In other words, it was Guyana's own position when negotiating, drafting and adopting the Port of Spain Protocol that the Protocol shall address the boundary dispute in toto. And this understanding of the Port of Spain Protocol is also further confirmed by later subsequent practice, inter alia, it was guyana which in 1981 wrote to the United Nations Secretary General confirming that, quote, the Protocol of Port of Spain provided the climate for exploratory conversations of substance which took place in 1978 between the President of Venezuela and Guyana's Prime Minister, end quote. Guyana thereby confirmed once again that substantive discussions as to the overall boundary issue were the very object of the Port of Spain Protocol, as had already already been the case of the Geneva Agreement. And let me now bring the Court's attention to the most important substantive advances made by guyana itself between 1970 and 1982. In 1975, Venezuela President Peres and the Guyanese Prime Minister Burnham not only discussed the border controversy at last, but also outlined possible pathways to a practical solution. This culminated in a proposal in 1976 by Guyanese Prime Minister Burnham to solve the border issue through economic cooperation. More specifically, he was prepared to link economic assistance with the settlement of the border question. The Guyanese Prime Minister stated, quote, I would propose. The Guyanese Prime Minister, I would propose that there should be signed an accord which would lay address the border question, end quote. What is more is that during bilateral negotiations that took place in 1977, the Guyanese Foreign Minister was, quote, proposing a correction to the last section of the border lines, specifically at Punta Playa. The rectification consisted of changing the northwest orientation of the current borderline and drawing it north east, end quote. This once again confirms that during the bilateral negotiations undertaken within the framework of the Port of Spain Protocol and the Geneva Agreement, Guyana then was ready to find creative solutions and give up de facto control over territory which the 1899 award had purportedly allocated to British Guyana. Guyana thus once again perceived itself the Geneva Agreement, as an instrument that was meant to solve the substantive boundary issue between itself and Venezuela, rather than as an instrument that was meant to address the issue of the invalidity of the award. Members of the Court what becomes obvious from the sum of all of these negotiations is that the Parties, both Parties, did not concern themselves anymore with the issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award. Instead, they the Parties, were aiming to find a practical solution to the overall border dispute, as had already been mandated by Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement. For all methods of dispute settlement provided, then all methods of dispute settlement provided for an Article 4. And even after the Port of Spain Protocol had expired in 1982, the parties continued to try to reach an overall mutually acceptable, satisfactory solution. Notably, they continued to discuss possible boundary lines in exceptional detail. These discussions again prove as if there was still any need that the Parties had completely moved away from discussions about the invalidity of the award. And this approach is also reflected in three joint communiques released by the two parties. It becomes apparent from these three joint communities of 2004, 2010 and 2013 respectively, that the Parties deliberately abstained to refer in those documents to the issue of the invalidity of the award. Conversely, in line with the Geneva Agreement, they focused once again, I might say, on practical and satisfactory solutions to be found for the territory controversy as such. Thus, when President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez visited Guyana in 2004, the two parties once again referred to the quote, search for a peaceful and practical settlement of the controversy, end quote, undertaken within the framework of the United Nations Good Offices process. Similarly, in 2010, Guiana and Venezuela reaffirmed their confidence in the good office process of the Secretary General, which allowed them to move forward towards finding a practical and satisfactory solution to the territorial controversy. Their joint communique provided the two parties, quote, reaffirmed their confidence in the good offices process as a mechanism that would assist the Parties, the Parties, to advance towards a practical and satisfactory solution for the border controversy, end quote. And this joint perception was then again reiterated on the occasion of a visit of Venezuelan President Maduro in Georgetown in 2013. Considering all of the above, Guyana's claim that the Geneva Agreement is concerned with the issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award is ingenious, ingenuous to say the least. As a matter of fact, the subsequent agreed practice by both parties confirmed their joint understanding that the Geneva Agreement was meant, ever since its inception, to provide for a practical, satisfactory and mutually acceptable solution for the substance of their boundary dispute. The Geneva Agreement therefore addresses and aims at settling the overall boundary dispute, leaving aside the question of the nullity of the 1899 award. This understanding of the mandate of the various dispute settlement mechanisms provided for in Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement also aligns with the good offices process of the United Nations Secretary General. The focus of the good offices efforts by the Secretary General, too, was not on the nullity of the award, but rather on finding a solution to the larger boundary issue. In 1993, the Secretary General indicated that the aim of his good Offices, as envisaged by Article 4, and on which this Court's jurisdiction is purportedly based, was to secure a mutually satisfactory settlement of the controversy. In order to achieve this goal, he deemed it necessary that, quote, creative options, end quote, must be explored. Some of those creative options were then discussed by the parties in 1995, inter alia, Venezuela and Guyana considered the possibility of returning control over parts of the disputed territory to Venezuela. In this context, the Party is notably also explored a possible then lease back by Venezuela in favor of of Guyana of some portions of the territory. And in the same vein, in a letter dated 18 August 1998, the Guyanese President herself reiterated that the purpose of the good offices process Based on Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement is to, quote, explore all avenues that would lead to the settlement of the border controversy, end quote. In this letter, she similarly referred to the controversy as being one quote over the border with Venezuela, end quote, which aligns with the statement of Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jose Rangel, who soon thereafter confirmed the solution to be found in the good offices process, which must be, quote, reasonable, fair and equitable, end quote. This broad interpretation of the mandate of the dispute settlement process provided for in Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement was also also shared by the Secretary General himself. On several occasions, both the Secretary General himself as well as his personal representatives stressed that the aim of his endeavors within the framework of the Geneva Agreement were to secure, quote, a mutually satisfactory settlement of the controversy, end quote. This controversy being, quote, the border controversy between Guyana and in Venezuela, end quote. Can it Thus, be really assumed, as Guyana wants you to believe, that by bringing about a practical solution to the controversy, the Secretary General, in exercising his mandate under Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement, meant to decide upon the validity or rather the invalidity of the 1899 award. Rather, it was the Secretary General's consistent position that a decision focusing on the issue of the invalidity of the 1800 would not align with the very object and purpose of the Geneva agreement. Mr. President, members of the Court, in accordance with the Geneva Agreement, Guyana and Venezuela are under an obligation, a legally binding obligation, to find new paths to solving the issue of the Guyanese Venezuelan frontier. Given that the Geneva Agreement has, as I have demonstrated by now, time and again, move beyond the issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award, members of the Court, let me conclude. As I have shown, on the basis of well established methods of treaty interpretation, the Geneva Agreement contains a binding legal obligation for all actors addressed by its Article 4, including the court Court, to strive for a practical and mutually satisfactory solution for the border controversy. A solution that merely focuses on the invalidity of the 1899 award does not constitute such a practical and mutually satisfactory solution. Indeed, any such decision would contravene this very obligation arising under Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement. Given that such a binary resolution will always be necessarily one sided and thus not mutually satisfactory. In line with the Geneva Agreement, all actors addressed by its Article 4 must therefore look beyond the issue of the invalidity of the 1899 award, as discussed. This is not, however, only a matter of literal interpretation. In fact, this was the understanding which the Party shared from the very outset of the Geneva Agreement. What is more is that since 1966, and thus from the very beginning of the workings of the Mixed Commission, throughout the ensuing bilateral negotiations and the conclusion of the Port of Spain Protocol, up to the United nations good offices, the Parties, both Parties have consistently tried to find substantive solutions to to the dispute over the frontier. The practice by Venezuela in Guyana, as well as that of the various peaceful settlement mechanisms acting on the basis of and in accordance with Article 4 Geneva Agreement, all prove that the Parties shared this understanding. This understanding, namely, that the Geneva Agreement was meant to settle the controversy by negotiations. Accordingly, the Court too can neither decide on the invalidity of the 1899 award, since this would run counter to Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement. Otherwise, Guyana would indeed, as I said at the outset, have its cake and eat it too. I thank you for your kind attention. And I would now kindly ask you, Mr. President, to call Professor Roton to the podium. I thank Professor Zimmerman for his statement. You don't.

I now give the floor to Professor Antonio Ramiro. Rotons. You have the floor, sir. Mr. President, members of the Court, it falls to me to conclude this session of the morning of the first round of pleadings by Venezuela. My intention is to establish the link between what Professors Mbenge and Zimmerman have just explained regarding the Geneva Agreement and the historical circumstances which led to it. Circumstances which will be examined in depth by other colleagues during this afternoon's session. Mr. President, members of the Court, the Geneva Agreement of 17 February 1966 is based on Venezuela's assertion that the arbitral award of 3 October 1899 is null and void, from which Guyana draws the conclusion that if the agreement derives from a statement that Guyana does not share, it will suffice for the Court to rule on the merits of either position to settle the controversy. The drawback of this approach is that the parties to the agreement agreed on another path. Could the parties have been able to negotiate the settlement of a dispute relating to the validity of the 1899 arbitral award by bringing the matter before the Court? Of course. Yet they did not do so. The negotiation of the agreement made it possible to avoid set aside, dismiss this question. The parties did not wish to deal with a controversy where there would be winners and losers. It was crucial to preserve neighborly relations, good neighborly relations. And it was just as vital to ensure the swift independence of British Guyana as well as the significant commercial interests of the United Kingdom in Venezuela by agreeing beforehand on a method to resolve the boundary dispute. The Territorial Controversy Venezuela's contention concerning the invalidity of the 1899 arbitral award was admittedly the point of departure of the Geneva Agreement, but its object was not to ascertain whether it was well founded or not. The object and purpose of the agreement was to resolve a boundary dispute between the Republic and first the British Empires and then with its former colony of British Guyana, which became the Cooperative Republic of Guyana on 17th May 1966. How could this controversy be resolved? This boundary dispute, the reply provided by the agreement was very explicit through a determined good faith search for a practical arrangement to the satisfaction of both parties, a fair agreement from which each party would stand to gain. The Prime Minister of British Guyana's signature, that of Forbes Burnham, is at the bottom of the Geneva Agreement alongside those of Inacio Ibarin Borges, Venezuela's Minister of Foreign affairs, and Michael Stewart, the United Kingdom's Secretary of State. For foreign affairs. Three months later, after having become independent, Guyana became a party to the agreement and as such was duty bound to respect it and abide by, did so on several occasions by proposing territorial arrangements which did not succeed. However, all in all, rather than cooperating in good faith to reach a practical and satisfactory arrangement as foreseen under the Geneva Agreement, its policy was to play for time to settle physically in the disputed territory, to unilaterally turn its administration into sovereignty, and to undermine the object and purpose of the agreement. Mr. President, members of the Court, the Geneva Agreement, a treaty whose legal nature is undisputed, establishes a new normative framework for the resolution of a dispute concerning Guyana. Esquiba, the agreement which Guyana now shuns like Nosferato, shying away from the sunlight, is a typical illustration, a quintessential example of non innovation during a decolonization process. The title of the agreement to resolve the controversy over the frontier, its preamble, its articles, the canonical interpretation of its terms, as well as the travos preparatoire and subsequent practice during which substantive proposals were put forward by Guyana, irrefutably demonstrate that the parties wanted to set aside the dispute over the validity of the 1899 arbitral award in order to solely deal with the search for a practical and satisfactory settlement of the territorial controversy. Mr. President, members of the Court, with the Geneva Agreement, the question of the validity of the award of 3 October 1899, which has been the subject of endless discussions but fortunately never caused any bloodshed, has been transferred from the realm of substantive law to that of historical justice. For over a century Venezuela has been seeking to demonstrate the grave injustice it has suffered because of the connivance between two empires, that of Great Britain and the emerging one of the United States. America for the United States, whilst preserving the United Kingdom status quo over the hemisphere, Venezuela shall continue to fight until this injustice has been redressed. The shift from suspicion plausible indications of nullity to established facts was made easier by the publication in 1949 of the 1944 Malai Prevost memorandum, the partial opening of the British archives alongside memoirs and diaries like that of Theodore Martens, which became available much later that said members of the Court, this Court's judgment of 18th December 2020 brought the matter back to life. Just like the Prophet Elijah resurrected the son of Zarephath's widow. A miracle to err is human. Venezuela, in order to better defend its interests, has been forced to present not only solid grounds for the invalidity of the arbitral award, but equally the shortcomings of the 1997 Treaty of Washington, which led to arbitration proceedings and whose essential provisions were overlooked by the arbitrators. Guyana's narrative is not short of stories, which of course would deserve the Booker price, but which should not be included in these unfortunate proceedings. In reality, Venezuela, seeing its hopes crushed, was coerced into accepting a treaty full of secret deals between the United Kingdom and the United States. The era into which it was fraudulently induced radically vitiated the Treaty of Washington of 1897 and inevitably, the 1899 arbitral award. Arbitration is not synonymous with arbitrariness. Even at the end of the 19th century, there were rules. Arbitration provided for under the Treaty of Washington was arbitration in law. This afternoon my colleagues will speak to you of the flaws which, through a form of metastasis, led to to a flawed, a rotten award. Now I would simply like to underscore one point. The arbitrators obliged to adjudicate, according to the law engaged in political bargaining orchestrated by the President of the Tribunal, to the benefit of the United Kingdom. Although doctrine draws a conceptual distinction between arbitration in law and arbitration in equity, the proceedings relating to Guayana Esquiba represent a sociological contribution to arbitration of injustice. The 1999 arbitrary award enshrined the false interests of the British Empire in collusion with the United States within the context of the privileged and special relationships which they revel in and which herein has found one of its cornerstones. In other words, the award was an additional manifestation of colonialism and the way the dominant powers make their interests prevail over the rights of the countries which were unfortunate enough to cross their path. Mr. President, members of the court, according to Guyana, even if we were to assume that the treaty and or the arbitration award were invalid, Venezuela's subsequent conduct would have constituted acquiescence, thus curing these instruments of their flaws. In fact, nothing is further from the reality. Venezuela's supposed resignation during the first few decades of the 20th century century, far from crystallizing acquiescence and even less so amounting to a renunciation of its rights, testified to its awareness of the dangerous proximity to an empire that was steeped in superiority and ready to use force to expand the territorial dispossession to which it had already subjected the Republic, it was wise in these circumstances to remain silent in order to avoid further territorial expansion by the United Kingdom. Indeed, Venezuela was so traumatized by the bombing and blockade of its ports in 1902 and 1903 carried out to demand repayment of poultry debts that the British proposals aimed at amending the political provisions of the arbitral award in favor of of the more natural ones were swiftly rejected lest they constitute a Trojan horse for further territorial transfers. But this is no longer the issue. In fact, this point was not invoked by the United Kingdom during the negotiations of Geneva Agreement. The issue now is full compliance with the agreement, its object and its purpose. Even assuming quod non that the 1897 treaty and the 1899 award were valid under the obsolete principles of international law of a bygone era, or because their defects or flaws were supposedly cured by Venezuela's subsequent behavior, these facts would be irrelevant today for the purposes of resolving the territorial dispute which is governed exclusively by the 17 February 1966 agreement. Mr. President, members of the Court, the creation of the United nations in 1945, the process of decolonization and the decline of the British Empire brought about a fundamental change in the circumstances. States that were dispossessed by the greed of the British Empire and other colonial powers and that had been forced to accept their disastrous situation. These States, freed from the structural coercion that they had been subjected to, which had led to what was arrogantly called international law of civilized countries, these states were now able to make their voices heard and reclaim their usurped territories at a time when the colonial status quo was being profoundly disrupted by the imperative of decolonization. The claims of the dispossessed countries whose rights had been suppressed for decades were now revived. Decolonization is not restricted to self determination of the people who had been under the colonial yoke. It includes the return of territories that had been usurped by colonial powers to their legitimate sovereign owners, even if these territories had been validated by treaties or arbitral awards. This is recognized in the Declaration of Decolonization Resolution 151415 of 14 July December 1960. The Geneva Agreement forms part of and is the result of the decolonisation process. The history of its negotiation is a success story. By signing the agreement, the parties replaced the legal framework of the arbitral award of 1899 and its constitution rurally the 1905 delimitation agreement with another framework in which, recognizing the imperative of decolonization, they undertook to seek a peaceful settlement of their territorial controversy through a practical arrangement that was to the satisfaction of both parties and taking into consideration all the circumstances of the case. Mr. President, members of the Court, this case should have been settled in 2020 through a judgment in which the Court would have declared that it lacked jurisdiction. The Court did not do so. And that is why we find ourselves in this situation. What will we do now with the widow Zarifat's resurrected son? If the Court has erroneously based its jurisdiction contested by Venezuela on Article 4, paragraph 2 of the Geneva Agreement, we can now expect it to respect the object and purpose of that agreement. Indeed, to err is human, but in errore, persevere diabolicum. To preserve. To persevere in error is diabolical. This is how the Latin adage continues, which is attributed to several Cicero and Seneca, Augustine of Hippo and Jerome of Strident. The point here is not to correct, but to write straight lines between crooked lines. If the Court wishes to dismiss this case by declaring that the validity of 1899 arbitral award leads to the confirmation of the boundary set out therein, this is what Guyana wishes. It will reduce the Geneva Agreement to a mere empty shell and will constitute, 127 years later, the final link in the judicial whitewashing of a territorial disposition suffered by Venezuela at the hands of the British Empire. And 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 fuelling the conflict. Mr. President, members of the Court, Both Guyana and Venezuela have suffered under the British Empire. It is deplorable that for the past 10 years, Guyana, instead of honoring its commitments under the Geneva Agreement and through a mix of amnesia and greed, has sought to take over from the United Kingdom and has become an usurper itself. In fact, it has had the audacity to play victim when faced with Venezuela. 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. It was a staunch supporter of its emancipation from the colonial yoke and recognized this on the very day of its independence, on 17 May 1966. But it did so with an explicit reservation that Guyana could not fail to discharge its obligations under the Geneva Agreement. Venezuela accepted that Guyana's independence should take precedence over the settlement of the territorial controversy because it was confident that the new state would honor its commitments. Mr. President, members of the Court, this presentation brings this morning's sitting of the first round of Venezuela's pleadings to an end. I thank you for your kind attention. I would like to thank Professor Ramiro Bretons.

Good morning. Sitting. The oral proceedings will resume this afternoon at 3pm the sitting is closed.