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

Please be seated. The sitting is open. The court meets this afternoon to hear the second round of oral argument of Guyana on the merits in the case concerning arbitrary award of 3rd October 1899, Guyana versus Venezuela. I now invite Mr. Paul Leichler to address the call. You have the source.

Mr. President, members of the court, good afternoon. I'm pleased to begin Guyana's second round of oral pleadings. I will address you on two treaties that have been placed in issue. The 1897 Treaty of Washington and the 1966 Geneva Agreement. There is a connection between these two treaties. They represent the beginning and the end of a mythological narrative that Venezuela has propagated to depict itself as the noble and virtuous victim of British colonialism and American hegemony, which purportedly came together at the end of the 19th century to rob it of its holy land, the Guayana Essequiba, by bullying, defrauding and coercing it into signing an abusive arbitration agreement, forcing it to accept a manifestly unjust arbitral award, and then keeping it in a state of fear and ignorance for 60 years to prevent it from protesting the injustice of that award. But in 1962, the myth takes a happier turn when heroic Venezuela, inspired by the new era of decolonization, summons up its courage, shakes off the chains of imperialism and champions the cause of Guyana's independence, for which it is rewarded with a new agreement in 1966 at Geneva whereby consent is given to end the historic injustice of of the heinous arbitral award by setting it aside and casting it into the dustbin of history. In this self serving and fictitious narrative, the roles of victim and aggressor are reversed. Venezuela, which misconstrues both the 1897 treaty and the 1966 agreement and belatedly and groundlessly rejects the 1899 award, is in historical reality the aggressor, having obstructed and delayed Guyana's independence and threatened it ever since, and more recently in defiance of the Court's orders, having adopted legislation to annex over 70% of Guyana's territory. Yet it tries to portray itself as the victim of colonialism perpetuated by the British over a century ago and perpetuated by Guyana as the beneficiary of British imperial expansion into Venezuela's own territory. This is nothing more than a cynical inversion of history, but it underlines and explains Venezuela's entire case. It is invoked to justify Venezuela's efforts to deprive Guyana of the vast majority of its sovereign territory while at the same time dressing itself up as a champion of decolonization. It's difficult to resist the temptation to call this out for what it so plainly is, a brazen case of pandering to the audience, in this case the court, by falsely depicting the dispute between the parties as one rooted in Venezuela's purported service to the cause of decolonization. The dispute at the heart of this case is nothing of the sort, not remotely. All the myths unravel when confronted by the evidence, the contemporaneous documentary evidence which Venezuela so conspicuously and conveniently ignored. On Wednesday we presented that evidence methodically, comprehensively and visually on your screens and in your folders. On Monday, Venezuela had a chance to respond. They did not. They had a chance to submit contemporaneous evidence of their own. They did not. The evidence we presented on Monday, not by mere assertion or by footnote, but by physical documentation shown and made available to you presently stands unchallenged except by unsupported assertion. And it completely disembodies each of Venezuela's myths one by one. Let me begin with the mother of all their myths, that the territory between the Essequibo and Orinoco rivers once belonged to Venezuela as successor to Spain. Venezuela's representatives, including its council, repeatedly and vociferously referred to the territory as Venezuela's, expressing outrage that any of it might be awarded to Great Britain and the fact that much of it was as evidence of a corrupt arbitration agreement and a corrupt award. Leaving aside the fact that it was Venezuela that insisted on arbitration of the competing claims of title to precisely this territory and got its wish, there is no evidence in the record of this case that Venezuela or Spain before it ever occupied any part of it. Venezuela has presented none in this case. Likewise, Venezuela presented no evidence in the 1899 arbitration that it or Spain ever actually occupied any of the territory that was ultimately awarded to Great Britain. You can read the transcripts of those proceedings, searching in vain for any such evidence. Whatever attempts Spain might have made to establish settlements or religious missions in the 17th and 18th centuries were short lived. This is the map that Venezuela submitted in its counter memorial depicting the Spanish settlements, mainly religious missions in the disputed territory. On top of it, we have superimposed the boundary fixed by the 1899 award. As you can see, none of the settlements were in the territory awarded to Great Britain. Venezuela's pretensions to the territory to the east are and have always been unfounded. In contrast, the evidence shows continuous occupation of the territory by the Dutch and then the British. You will recall, for example, that we showed you on Monday, contemporaneous cartographic evidence of Dutch settlements extending all the way from the Essequibo to the Orinoco, especially along the coast, as well as up the Pomeroon River. And we identified for you more than 30 locations in this region that still bear their original Dutch names. Venezuela had no answer for this. They conspicuously avoided mention of stands completely unchallenged. Here is the map produced by President Cleveland's U.S. venezuela Boundary Commission, showing European settlements as of 1814, the year Britain supplanted the Netherlands. Dutch settlements are depicted in red, Spanish settlements in green on the original, which we now highlight to make clearer. With the boundary fixed by the 1899 award now superimposed, you can see that it corresponds to who occupied which part of the territory. As of 1814, according to the U.S. venezuela Boundary Commission, there was no Spanish occupation east of this boundary line. The map was published by the boundary commission in February 1897. That is the same month in which the 1897 treaty was signed. This is the title page. As you can now see, this was produced under the auspices of, among others, Justice David Brewer, later an arbitrator, and Mr. Severo Malet Prevost, then serving as secretary to the Commission. They knew that it was no injustice for the arbitral tribunal in 1899 to award the territory east of the agreed boundary line to the British. Mr. President, we know that the question before the Court concerns the legal validity of the 1899 award, not whether the Tribunal got the boundary right. That is only to be addressed by the Court according to its 2020 judgment if it determines that the award is invalid. But we have called this evidence to your attention on Monday and again today because it exposes the myth that underlines all of Venezuela's contentions about the 1897 treaty, the 1899 award, and the 1966 agreement. I turn to the 1897 treaty and our response to the arguments challenging its validity made by Professors Azaria and Palchetti and repeated by Professor Touvenon, which are fully based on Venezuelan mythology. Each of these three council gave us a large overdose of passionate rhetoric, including invective against Britain and the United States denouncing demonic British imperialism and hegemonic America. Their speeches could have been delivered by La Passionaria. To be sure, it's exhilarating to raise your fist and chant revolutionary slogans against perfidious Albion and rapacious Uncle Sam. I know the feeling well. I marched in every anti war demonstration since Vietnam. But loyally reciting a client's narrative is not evidence and it is certainly not contemporaneous evidence. Where is the contemporaneous evidence from the late 19th century to support the argument that Great Britain and the United States defrauded or structurally coerced Venezuela to sign the 1897 treaty, which is said to have been negotiated behind its back and contrary to its interests? Venezuela had the chance to present it in its written pleadings and did not. They had the chance again on Wednesday and again they did not. In fact, the evidence is entirely to the contrary. On Monday I took you through it. I did not indulge in mere assertion like Venezuela's Council did, leaving you to review only the scant footnotes when they were supplied to check for accuracy. I showed the evidence to you, displaying 27 different contemporaneous documents on your screens and and including them in your folder so that you could assess them for yourselves. Neither the authenticity nor the accuracy of this evidence has been challenged by Venezuela, neither in its written pleadings nor on Wednesday. Not a word of contradiction. So here are some of the conclusions that can now be drawn from them, conclusions that Venezuela has not contested with contrary evidence. I will footnote to the evidentiary sources here because I already showed them to you on Monday. By Venezuela's own admission, it wanted to go to arbitration with the British to determine title to the disputed territory and it repeatedly urged the United States to use its influence to compel the British to agree to that arbitration. The United States agreed to assist Venezuela, took up Venezuela's cause and ultimately forced the British to agree to Venezuela's demand for arbitration, even threatening to go to war if Britain refused. Venezuela, far from complaining about so called US hegemony, appealed to the US expressly to invoke the Monroe Doctrine against Great Britain, which it did. And Venezuela profusely expressed its gratitude to the US for obtaining Britain's agreement to arbitrage. You will recall the words to that effect by senior Venezuelan officials, including the President of Venezuela, Joaquin Crespo, when it came to negotiating the arbitration agreement. The uncontested evidence showed that Venezuela preferred to have the United States negotiate on its behalf because it believed that the US had more influence with the British and would obtain a better deal for Venezuela than if Venezuela negotiated directly. The US Secretary of State, Richard Olney, liaised closely and frequently with Venezuela's two representatives during the negotiations, received them at his home, consulted with them, shared drafts with them, welcomed their proposals, adopted and made them his own and persuaded his British Counterpart Lord Poncefit to accept them, including those that Venezuela regarded as the most critical. The Venezuelan representatives expressed their full satisfaction with the draft agreement that Secretary only negotiated, and they recommended that the Venezuelan government accept it. Venezuela then accepted the agreement freely and without compulsion as serving its best interest. This is fully documented and uncontested. Here again you will recall the words of President Crespo affirming that Venezuela accepted the agreement free of coercion. Quote, the settlement plan was presented to Venezuela for its consideration with no coercive intent and in full respect of the sovereignty and independence of the Republic. And he again expressed his profound gratitude to the United States for helping Venezuela accomplish its objectives. How can Venezuela's council in 2026 complain that Venezuela was coerced, structurally or otherwise, in the face of this declaration by Venezuela's president in 1897 that Venezuela freely signed the treaty in the absence of any coercion. No doubt they are following instructions from their client in advancing Venezuela's current mythology, not the position Venezuela held contemporaneously in 1897. As you know, the myth of invalidity of the treaty was spawned in 1962, some 65 years after the fact. At the time, Venezuela first began to denounce the 1899 arbitrary award. But this is not the reality that Venezuela recognized in 1897. It is directly opposite and in tension with the contemporaneous position of the Venezuelan government, including its president. The best that Professor Azaria could do to support her argument that the 1897 treaty was imposed on Venezuela was to call your attention to a single contemporaneous document. Just one, but one from which I had also read on Monday. It was a December 1896 telegram from Secretary Olney to Mr. Storo, Venezuela's representative, sent after Venezuela had informed the Secretary of its acceptance of the draft treaty in November. At the end of this telegram, Mr. Olney referred to Venezuela as, quote, offensive for seeking at that late date to amend the clause on appointment of arbitrators after, in his view, Venezuela had already agreed to sign the treaty. What Professor Azaria did not tell you is that Secretary Olney, at Venezuela's prior request, communicated the new Venezuelan proposal on appointment of arbitrators to Lord Paunceford, who rejected it. And he informed the Venezuelans that if they persisted in seeking this amendment, they would have to deal with Lord Poncefert directly. As I showed you on Monday, that is exactly what Venezuela's Minister in Washington, Mr. Andrade, did on 28 December, when he and Lord Paunceford arrived at an agreement on the issue which Venezuela deemed acceptable, and it then proceeded to sign the treaty on that basis. This is not the smoking gun of America's betrayal of Venezuela that Professor Azaria pretends it to be. There is neither gun nor smoke here nor anything else to support Venezuela's case. Professor Azaria has no other evidence to show you and nothing else to say about the evidence that we showed you on Monday. Professor Paul Kedi, for his part, energetically embraced the Venezuelan Myth that the 1897 treaty was negotiated by Britain and the US behind Venezuela's back. The evidence we showed you on Monday, which stands uncontradicted, exposes the complete falsity of this myth. Professor Palchetti's focus was on what he considered evidence of a malicious Anglo American conspiracy to defeat Venezuela in the arbitration. The evidence, according to Professor Palchetti, consisted of an exchange of confidential notes between Secretary Olney and Lord Poncefit that he falsely told you were kept hidden from Venezuela. When I say falsely, I do not accuse my friend of prevarication, but of not being sufficiently familiar with the evidence or of hiding it from you. It was very noticeable that Professor Paul Kedi did not show you the so called confidential notes or even quote from them. He showed you only later correspondence referring to them. In contrast, I brought the notes to your attention on Monday. I displayed on our slides PR 1.17 and PR 120 at tab 3 of your folders the note from Secretary Olney to Lord Poncefit and referred you to annex 169 of Venezuela's counter memorial for Lord Pauncefet's report on his communication to Mr. Olney. As I showed and explained through this exchange, an agreement was reached between the two negotiators on the length of the prescription period, which was 50 years, as Venezuela wished, and on the preservation of the 1850 agreement, also as Venezuela wished. Significantly, in view of Professor Palchetti's false charge that the notes were kept from Venezuela, I had also displayed for you at slides 1.12 to 1.20, Secretary Olney's correspondence with Mr. Storrow at the time these notes were written, showing that Mr. Olney disclosed Lord Paunceford's proposals and his own to Mr. Storo and Mr. Andrade, that Mr. Olney consulted with them, including in his own home, prior to writing to Lord poncefit and that Mr. Olney's proposals were consistent with those previously submitted to him by Mr. Storrow. The correspondence leaves no doubt that both Mr. Storo and Mr. Andrade were privy to the so called confidential notes and to the agreements on prescription and. And the 1850 agreement that were reached therein. Professor Palchetti referred you to the transcript of the arbitration hearings more than a year later in which former President Harrison, Venezuela's lead counsel, seems to have been surprised by the existence of these notes. If he was unaware of them, it's Venezuela's fault. Its two representatives in Washington plainly knew of the notes and their contents at the time they were exchanged. Mr. Harrison himself speculated that Mr. Storrow would have known of them. He further speculated that perhaps Mr. Storrow decided not to share them with his client. But that is speculation, not evidence. And it is wrong because Mr. Andrade, Venezuela's minister in Washington, was made aware of them at the same time as Mr. Storrow. Professor Palchetti seems to have contempt for Mr. Storo. Why so? What did Mr. Storo ever do to him? Obviously nothing. But the animus toward him fits well with Professor Palchetti's imaginative conspiracy theory about US malevolence. According to Professor Palketti, Mr. Storo was a double agent. The Kim Philby of his day, who secretly served U.S. interests contrary to Venezuela's. There is no evidence of this. It's another Venezuelan Myth, another concoction. Mr. Storro deserves better. He was one of the most renowned American lawyers of his day. He earned Venezuela's trust by serving as his counsel before President Cleveland's Boundary Commission, leading to their invitation to him to represent their interests in the negotiation of the arbitration agreement with Great Britain. Foreign Minister Roxas initially expressed some hesitation about hiring him, but there is no record of disappointment in his efforts or accomplishments on Venezuela's behalf, or any doubt about his loyalty. Upon Mr. Storrow's sudden and untimely death, he was eulogized by the President of Venezuela. The fact that Mr. Storo enjoyed Secretary Olney's confidence and had regular access to him, having attended law school together, was a benefit to Venezuela, not a detriment. And this is reflected in the contemporaneous correspondence between them which you have seen, which resulted in Mr. Olney successfully negotiating for the outcomes proposed by Mr. Storo and Mr. Andrade on the two issues Venezuela says it regarded as the most critical. The length of the prescription period and the preservation of the 1850 agreement. Mr. President, what this unchallenged contemporaneous evidence shows about the events leading to the negotiation of the 1897 agreement and the actual negotiation of it, is that there is no truth in the poor Venezuela narrative, a fledgling republic unjustly robbed of its territory by the superpowers of the day, the nefarious British and treacherous Americans. The narrative that Venezuela and its Council are trying so hard to sell to you. In Texas, they would simply say that dog don't hunt. Mr. President, it is not often in my career that I have stood up and defended the lawfulness of US foreign policy. But we are talking about the 1890s. My country was not then claiming Greenland or Canada as the 51st state. I turn now to 1966 and the Geneva Agreement, in which the United States fortunately played no part. Venezuela claims that the Geneva Agreement set aside and replaced the 1899 arbitral award, so that the validity of the award is not at issue in this case and therefore is not for the Court to rule on. They referred to this as a novation. In fact, it is a novelty. Venezuela made the argument for the first time in its rejoinder filed last August. Apparently it took them 59 years after signing the agreement and seven years after the initiation of this case to come up with this interpretation. But as the saying goes, there is no one as zealous as a recent convert, and all of Venezuela's Council, all eight of them who spoke on Wednesday, expressly made or endorsed this argument. It seemed to us from their rote like and repetitive incantation of fealty that this was the price they had to pay for admission to the podium. We say this argument is as off base as it is novel. We base our response to it on the text of the 1966 agreement itself. My friend, my very good friend, Professor Zimmerman gave you Venezuela's interpretation of the text. But he was not nearly as thorough or as accurate as he was in his indispensable treatise on the Statute of the Court. Astonishingly, astonishingly, in his article by article review of the agreement, he completely skipped over Article 5. Given his customary meticulousness, this was surely not an oversight. Why did he decide to avoid discussion or even mention of Article 5? Let's look at the text. Paragraph 1 states that nothing contained in this Agreement shall be interpreted as a renunciation or diminution by the United Kingdom, British Guyana or Venezuela of any basis of claim to territorial sovereignty in the territories of Venezuela or British Guyana or of any previously asserted rights or claims to such territorial sovereignty. Paragraph 2 states no acts or activities taking place while this Agreement is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in the territories of Venezuela or British Guyana or create any rights of sovereignty in those territories, except insofar as such acts or activities result from any agreement reached by the Mixed Commission and accepted in writing by the Government of Guyana and the Government of Venezuela. Well, I think we found the answers to our question. Professor Zimmerman told us that the Geneva Agreement has no savings clause. He contrasted it with the Polish Danzig Agreement, where such a clause exists. On this basis, he argued that all rights and obligations claimed by the parties under prior legal instruments, including the 1899 arbitral award, were set aside and replaced by new rights and obligations under this 1966 agreement. But that is directly contradicted by paragraph one, which bears all the hallmarks of a savings clause. It is undeniable from the text that this preserves all assertions of rights and obligations under the 1899 arbitral award. Professor Zimmerman also told us that the conduct of the parties after the signing of the agreement, in particular their participation in negotiations via the Mixed Commission, demonstrates their understanding that the rights and obligations of under the 1899 award had been set aside and replaced. But that is contradicted by paragraph 2, which expressly provides that no future conduct pursuant to the agreement can be understood to constitute a waiver of pre existing rights unless the waiver is express and pursuant to an agreement between the parties. There is no evidence of any express waiver or any such agreement beyond Professor Zimmerman's remarkable excision of Article 5 from the agreement. There is his tortuous reading of Article 1. The reference in the text to controversy in that article, he tells us, can only refer to to the controversy over title to territory rather than any controversy over the validity of the 1899 arbitral award because he tells us the same word controversy was used in the 1897 treaty two years before the award was issued. It sounds like a sophisticated analysis, but it's just a piece of sophistry because it ignores the actual text of Article 1, part of which in my friend's reading suffers the same ignominious excision from the agreement as the whole of Article 5. It's on your screens now. The controversy between Venezuela and the United Kingdom which has arisen as a result of the Venezuelan contention that the arbitral award of 1899 about the frontier between British Guyana and Venezuela is null and void. The controversy identified in Article 1 is plainly not the same controversy as the one mentioned in the 1897 treaty. It is the quote controversy that has arisen as a result of Venezuela's contention that the arbitral award of 1899 is null and void. This text, especially when read in light of the text of Article 5, thoroughly defeats Venezuela's novation argument. If there is a controversy over Venezuela's contention that the award is null and void, as Article 1 says, it can only mean that the other parties to the agreement, namely Great Britain and British Guyana, ultimately Guyana, disagree with Venezuela's contention. That is, they do not agree that the award is null and void. To the contrary, they maintain, as they always have, that it is valid. So if they maintain that the award is valid and they claim rights under it as they DO, and Article 5 expressly preserves all rights and obligations claimed under instruments that predate the 1966 agreement, how can it possibly be maintained that Great Britain and British Guyana later Guyana agreed by signing this Agreement to abandon their rights and claims under the 1899 award? The answer is obvious. Their claim is frivolous. Venezuela's argument that the 1966 agreement somehow set aside and replace the 1899 award cannot be reconciled with the text of that agreement, especially if one reads the text that Professor Zimmerman would have you ignore. And I can cite unimpeachable authority for this Guyana's Reading of the Geneva Agreement and the Rejection of Venezuela's the Court itself I refer specifically to paragraph 64 of its December 2020 judgment on jurisdiction. The Court further notes that in the conclusion and implementation of the Geneva Agreement I apologize for reading the entire quote, but I don't think it would be appropriate for me to skip over any of the Court's language. The Court further notes that that in the conclusion and implementation of the Geneva Agreement, the Parties have expressed divergent views as to the validity of the 1899 award rendered by the Tribunal and the implications of this question for their frontier. Thus, Article 1 of the Geneva Agreement defines the mandate of the Mixed Commission as seeking satisfactory solutions for the practical settlement of, quote, the controversy between Venezuela and the United Kingdom which has arisen as a result of the Venezuelan contention that the arbitral award of 1899 about the frontier between British Guyana and Venezuela is null and void. That contention by Venezuela was consistently opposed by the United Kingdom in the period from 1962 until the adoption of the Geneva Agreement on 17 February 1966 and subsequently by Guyana after it became a party to the Geneva Agreement upon its independence in accordance with Article 8 thereof. In regard to Article 5, the court determined in paragraph 65 by referring to the preservation of their respective rights and claims to such territorial sovereignty, the Parties appear to have placed particular emphasis on the fact that the controversy referred to in the Geneva Agreement primarily relates to the dispute which has arisen as a result of Venezuela's contention that the 1899 award is null and void and its implications for the boundary line between Guyana and Venezuela. In sum, the text of the Geneva Agreement, as understood and explained by the Court, cannot be reconciled with Venezuela's novel reinterpretation of the agreement as a novation dispensing with the 1899 arbitral award. Professor D' Argent will have more to say about this subject and the effects of the 2020 judgment. Before concluding, Mr. President, I want to respond to Venezuela's presentation of itself as the South American continent's foremost crusader against colonialism and promoter of of Guyana's decolonization. This is another Venezuelan myth that cannot be reconciled with the facts. The historical record shows that Venezuela was an obstacle to Guyana's independence, not a facilitator. It strains to link its belated assertion of the invalidity of the 1899 arbitral award to the iconic resolution on decolonization adopted by the General assembly in 1960. There is no such link. Venezuela has presented no evidence of one. A more historically accurate explanation of the timing of Venezuela's denunciation of the arbitral award in 1962 is that British Guyana was then entering the final stage of its own decolonization process and Venezuela sensed an opportunity to exploit the new republic's weakness after the lowering of the Union Jack and the departure of British troops by resurrecting its bogus claim to the vast majority of Guyana's sovereign territory. Here is what Venezuela itself told the Court in its Memorandum on jurisdiction submitted on 28th November 2019. The Beginning well, I had hoped to show it to you, but I will read it to you. The beginning of the process of decolonization of British Guyana within the framework of the United nations prompted the Venezuelan government to formalize a claim in this regard to prevent the independence of the British colony supported by Venezuela from becoming an obstacle for its claim based on historical justice backed by the many causes of nullity of the aforementioned award. Venezuela's interests were not benign. They were self serving and predatory. They were to acquire the Essequibo at a time when newly born Guyana would be powerless to maintain it. Venezuela's Council speak of asymmetry. The only asymmetry is between Venezuela and Guyana. There was none in the 1890s when Venezuela enjoyed the full support of the United States in its contest with Great Britain. As the contemporaneous documents demonstrate. I should say the uncontested contemporaneous documents demonstrate balancing the power equation. This historical reality contrasts completely with Venezuela's mythical account of international relations during that period. Mr. President, I have presented Guyana's rebuttal on the 1897 treaty and the 1966 agreement. There is, of course, a third binding agreement that is of great importance in this case, the 1905 boundary treaty between Venezuela and Great Britain. My esteemed colleagues, Professor Sands and Professor Oral, will have more to say on the significance of that treaty. Mr. President, members of the Court, I thank you again for your kind courtesy and patient attention this afternoon and during these proceedings. And. And I ask that you call Professor Darjean to the podium.

I thank Mr. Reichler for his statement.

I would now like to give the floor to Professor Pierre d'. Argent. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, members of the court, following on from Mr. Reischler's presentation, Mr. Reichler has just recalled the true meaning of the Geneva Agreement, and I shall briefly respond to Venezuela's arguments that this agreement affected a legal novation between the parties, and that apparently, as a consequence of this, the real issue in this case, to use the words repeatedly emphasized by my friend and colleague Professor Mbengi, the real issue in this case was not identified by the court in its 2020 judgment, such that the jurisdiction that the Court declared itself to have is now moot. Mr. President, as Mr. Reichler has already pointed out, the argument of novation put forward by Venezuela in its rejoinder is new. One might even say that this argument amounts to a genuine novation of Venezuela's arguments. The play on words is certainly easy, but it is nonetheless accurate. When Venezuela first explained its position on the Geneva Agreement, it argued, as the Court noted in its 2020 judgment, and I quote, it argues that since Article 1 of the Geneva Agreement refers to seeking satisfactory solutions for the practical settlement of the controversy, this excludes, according to Venezuela, judicial settlement unless the parties consent to resort to it by special agreement. And indeed by writing this. The Court was in no way mistaken in writing this. Indeed, this is what Venezuela wrote in its memorandum of 28 November 2019 means, as Ultima ratio, once the failure of all political means available have been established by both parties, along with the UN Secretary General and his personal representative, Le Venezuela, but did indeed add that the juridical means are not the most adequate to satisfy the object and purpose of an agreement. Mes iles sous sout ne tout foi que je cite toujours arbitration or judicial settlement can only ensure that the dispute is amicably resolved in a manner acceptable to both parties Preamble of the Geneva Agreement if both parties accept these means and negotiate a special agreement spelling out its purpose and the body or institutions institution entrusted with the mission. It is well known that the Court, on the contrary, held that the Secretary General's decision to designate the Court did not require the Party's further consent. However, the position then defended by Venezuela was not that the Geneva Agreement precluded by novation the controversy as identified in Article 1 from being submitted to judicial settlement on the grounds that it called for a negotiated solution that was mutually acceptable to the parties. According to Venezuela, this this element, which had linked to the Preamble, would in fact have limited the Secretary General's power by requiring that the parties confirm by mutual agreement his decision to choose the Court. Furthermore, Members of the court in 2022, during the incidental proceedings concerning its objection based on the monetary gold principle, the possibility for the Court to rule on the validity of the award was the indispensable premise of that objection, and the Council on Venezuela's side emphasized this. Thus, according to Professor Zimmerman in 2020, he said that the 2020 judgment yield that in the case at hand, the Court has to necessarily decide upon the validity or invalidity of the award during 2020 hearings. Professor Tams emphasized on the same day three matters are clear and they all point to the central role of the United Kingdom. First, this case is primarily about the validity of a disputed arbitral award because the United Kingdom acted fraudulently. Second, the award, whose validity is primarily at stake, was rendered on the basis of a disputed arbitration agreement. And the third point? The third point mentioned by Professor Tams was the fact that the dispute concerning the validity of the award had been brought before the Court on the basis of the Geneva Agreement. However, as he rightly pointed out, this agreement was treaty to which the United Kingdom remains a party until today. It was precisely for this reason, as Guyana had argued, that the Court considered that the monetary goal principle does not come into play in this case. During the second round of oral proceedings in 2022, Professor Tams, my friend against emphasized these claims to reiterate, go to the validity of the award, thereby confirming that the issue of the nullity of the award lies at the heart of the claims of both parties. Paragraph 76 and 77 of your 2023 judgment duly reflected and summarized Venezuela's position in this regard. And this position confirmed fully what the Court had already noted in its 2020 judgment, namely and As I already recalled on Monday that the question of the validity of the 1899 award was central to the controversy which needed to be resolved under Article 4, paragraph 2 of the Agreement in order to reach a definitive settlement of the land boundary between Ghan. Mr. President, not only does Venezuela suffer from amnesia regarding its own legal positions in the present proceedings and contradicts them, but we would also like the Court to consider that the remarks made by its Minister of Foreign affairs before the National Congress in 1966 was a quote, unquote, political statement that was clearly erroneous and without legal significance. This is what Professor Tufner has argued. I commend my colleague's audacity to support his client. But let us pause for a moment to consider the enormity of his claim. Venezuela is saying that its negotiator and the signatory to the Geneva Agreement did not understand is truly astounding to brush aside with a wave of the hand essential contemporary contextual documents in this MANNER. Clearly, as Mr. Reichler has already pointed out, historical criticism is not Venezuela's forte. Rather, it excels in myth and legend. Borghese's very clear remarks obviously make Venezuela's argument untenable. As the Court noted in 2020 in paragraph 134 of its judgment, which I already read out on Monday, there is no basis, no basis for Venezuela's assertion that the Geneva Agreement does not cover the question of the validity of the award, and that this question is not part of the dispute covered by that agreement. By virtue of it, Venezuela has submitted this claim to the Court. Venezuela has therefore, as I said, already submitted this claim to the Court and the Court has expressly rejected it. Therefore, this has restudicata effect as regards the argument concerning novation which Professor Mbenge has discussed at length and which Professor Reichler has just recalled concerning the interpretation of the Geneva Agreement, in particular articles 1 and 5 thereof. What I have just pointed and what I said on Monday, drawing on your 2020 judgment, all this should suffice. According to me, everything about this argument regarding novation is flawed and not just the fact that it is plagued with an internal contradiction. As I had pointed out, Professor Mbengi attempts to sidestep the issue. According to him only requires a pre existing legal framework, whatever its validity. Pour vu queque le nouvel instrument, placing something where the validity void make less a pre existing legal. But what is this pre existing legal framework, this something that is said to have been replaced? Is it the award the 1897 Treaty of Washington, which gave it binding force the 1905 treaty which translated the award into a bilateral agreement? Or is it the boundary resulting from the treaty which enjoys a distinct permanence and constitutes the territorial base and boundaries left to it by the colonial power? My colleague, Professor M. Benger says nothing about this. There is undoubtedly a border regime, a legal framework comprised of all these legal acts, and a border controversy arising from the claim that the award is null and void. And as the Court quite logically pointed out, it is not possible to settle definitively the border controversy between the parties without first ruling on the validity of the award. Whatever Venusera may say, the question of the validity of the award is therefore part of the dispute to be resolved. Of course, Guyana accepts that at the time of its independence and by virtue of of the Geneva Agreement, it inherited a territorial controversy created by its neighbor. But that agreement in no way altered the terms of that controversy, nor set aside the legal acts on which it was founded. Indeed, where does it state in the Geneva Agreement that it supersedes the legal instruments constituting the legal framework governing the boundary? How does this treaty supersede not only the arbitral award, which it does not, but also two treaties and a boundary? Is Venezuela going to put forward an argument Based on articles 30 and 59 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties Whilst ignoring Article 5, paragraph 1 of the Geneva Agreement that Mr. Reischler has just referred to and which is a cornerstone of it? Mr. Reischler also demonstrated how Professor Mbenge's assertion that in five decades Guyana did not invoke the award, how this assertion was completely lacking in the facts. There is not and there has never been a clean slate, sorry between the parties. My friend argued once again that the Geneva Agreement is what now governs the Party's relation in relation to that matter. I'm not entirely sure what that matter means in the mind of my opponent and friend. But Guyana naturally accepts that the Geneva Agreement governs the Party's relationship regarding its subject matter, which is the controversy arising from Venezuela's claim that the award is null and void. And the legal implications of this question are validity for the demarcation of the boundary as well as paragraph 66 of your 2020 judgment, which I will not read again as it has held in law. It is precisely because the Geneva Agreement governs the relationship between parties with regard to this dispute that we are before the Court. This too has been held with the force of resto de Carta. Furthermore, the Court considered that Guyana's right to sovereignty over the territory in question is plausible. Admittedly, this finding, contained in an order for provisional measures, even if confirmed on this point, does not have resjudicata effect. But how could the Court have made such a finding if the Geneva Agreement had the effect of no equation claimed by Venezuela? Mr. Reichler, also read out to you a moment ago the second paragraph of Article 5 of the Geneva Agreement. It is true that in the absence of such a provision, the time that has elapsed since 1966 might have a completely different legal significance. However, contrary to what Professor Mbenge has argued, this provision in no way amounts to an ovation of the legal situation that existed on the day of the Geneva Agreement, which on the contrary, has been fully preserved by paragraph 1 of article 5. Professor Mbegi stated that rights and defenses 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, Atildi. That's what he said. Is that so? They were not. I invite my friend and his colleagues to re read Article 5, paragraph 1 of the Geneva Agreement. This provision renders Venezuela's conduct between 1899 and 1966 directly relevant to the definitive settlement of the border controversy. And my colleague Professor Oral will return to this point. According to Venezuela's Council, the obligation to seek satisfactory solutions for the practical settlement of the dispute referred to in Article 1 of the Geneva Agreement would mean that a novation was an argument that holds and that had taken place, and that the question of the validity of the award had been jointly waived. This is absolutely not the case. This is not the case according to the text of the agreement, and we know, and we should not need to have to repeat this, that your 2020 judgment held that the question of the validity of the award forms part of the controversy whose resolution is governed by the Agreement. It was indeed entirely concealable in 1966 that following a fresh examination of the case, the parties might agree to replace the award and its legal regime with a new territorial delimitation. In this respect, the Geneva Agreement offered the possibility of agreeing on a new border regime. But this agreement does not in itself affect or constitute any legal novation. To say this is no way to accept the erroneous assertion that the Geneva Agreement replaced finality with indeterminacy. Indeed, as the Court noted, since the preamble to the Geneva Agreement states that it was concluded to resolve the dispute arising from the claim that the award was null and void, its object and purpose is to ensure a definitive resolution of the dispute. Between the parties. That is the object and purpose of the Geneva Agreement about which we have been accused of saying nothing but which Venezuela pretends to ignore. And that is the reason once again, why we stand before this Court today. The purported novation which opens the door to endless negotiations is a construct that is clearly incompatible with the object and purpose of the Geneva Agreement. And it is precisely because the object and purpose of the agreement is to ensure that the final settlement of the controversy that after nearly 60 years of discussions in vain and having regard to the terms of Article 14, the Secretary General was entitled to decide that the Court would be the next step in settling the matter. Venezuela may now claim that Minister Yereba and Borghese did not know what he was talking about when he presented the Geneva Agreement at the National Congress. But I recall that he stated in 1966, according to the terms of Article 4 of the Geneva Agreement, in the event that no satisfactory solution for Venezuela is reached, the so called award shall be revised through arbitration or judicial recourse. This is exactly what the Court decided, not only by stating that it had jurisdiction to rule on the validity of the award, but also in the event of nullity, that it could hear that could hear the related question of the definitive settlement of the land boundary dispute between the parties. It is therefore incorrect to argue that Court does not uphold the award and Guyana refuses to come back to the negotiation table. Neither State advances and the controversy is left to fester. My dear colleagues, it is no longer just the Geneva Agreement that must be read, but also the 2020 judgment which is so despised by Venezuela. Finally, did that judgment fail to identify the real issue in this case? Absolutely not. As is evident particular from the 2024 judgment in the Azerbaijan vs. Armenia case, which Venezuela relies upon to determine on an objective basis the subject matter of the dispute between the parties. By isolating the real issue in the case and identifying the object of the applicant's claims concerns. This concerns the Court's jurisdiction Ratione materiae. And the court ruled in 2021 with Res Judicata effect, not only on the subject matter of the dispute, but also on the scope of its jurisdiction, both substantive and temporal. But members of the Court, you are all aware of this and I think that I have taken up enough of your time and I am very grateful for your kind attention. May I ask you, Mr. President, to call my dear colleague, Professor Pillay to the stand?

Professor, I thank Professor Darjon. And I now call on Professor Alain Pele to address the court. Sir, you have the floor. Mr. President, members of the Court, as Professor Pierre d' Argent has just eloquently recalled in quoting your own decisions, the subject matter of this case is to ascertain whether the 1899 award was valid or or not. The controversy that the parties agreed to settle through the mechanism established under the Geneva Agreement concerns the question, the question of the validity of the 1899 award, as well as its legal implications for the boundary line between Guyana and Venezuela. This, Mr. President, seems very much sufficient in order to revert to the subject of our hearing without needing to dwell any further on Venezuela's fifth attempt. To dissuade you from that, the list of. False which Venezuela attributes to Guyana is long. It is allegedly unjust. It fails to state reasons. Judges are said to have ruled infra petita negative abuse of power and at the same time, ultra petita. The means by which the award was adopted constitute fraud and it is based on dull or errors, therefore 6 capital sins. In view of this impressive list, was the 1899 award valid? The short answer is yes, but I shall nonetheless provide a slightly more detailed, albeit brief, reply distinguishing between the intrinsic complaints Venezuela raises with regard to the award and the extrinsic ones which concern the way in which it was adopted. Mr. President, amongst the complaints I have just listed, three relate directly to the very content of the award. Venezuela considers it to be unjust, it fails to state reasons. This assuredly is a key point, and the Tribunal allegedly failed to comply with its mandate, going both too far and falling short. Although this seems to be at the heart of Venezuela's complaints, I'm not going to dwell on the unjust or inexperienced equitable nature it attributes to the award. This is what the case is about. Whether to validate an unjust decision was said by Professor Palchetti. In a way, this criticism partly overshadows all the others. The award allegedly deprived Venezuela of a large portion of its between inverted commas territory. But this is putting the cart before the horse. It's postulating that what had to be proven is a given fact. In 1897, Great Britain and Venezuela. Sorry, I've lost. A page says the speaker. Had a border dispute. Both countries asked the Arbitral Tribunal to settle it. In the absence of a settlement, neither could legally assert the extent of its territory it was or they were in dispute. The award lifted the uncertainty and it was only after the tribunal's intervention that each party was able to assert its territorial, territorial or border claims. And I'll revert to that. The award did not deprive anyone's territory. It determined the boundaries of both restoring the good relations between the parties and removed the threats of armed conflict which hung over the region and which had given Venezuela great cause for concern. Mr. President, it is said that one has 24 hours to curse one's judges. Well, Venezuela has taken its time. Not only it didn't curse Martins and his colleagues during the period following the reading of the award, but moreover largely welcomed it. As Professor Oral amply explained on Monday afternoon, the 60 odd years it took it to realize that the award, in the absence of any new facts, as Professor Sands will show in a minute, was grossly unchange, just puts paid to this allegation. And indeed it's worth adding that we may well and no doubt should share the anti colonialist feelings which seem to have driven the righteous indignations of our opponents without, however, falling into the revisionist tendencies which undermine international legal order. But it is wise in this matter to always bear in mind the far sighted remarks made by the Court's chamber in Burkina Faso, Mali. In fact, however, the maintenance of the territorial status quo in Africa is often seen as the wisest course to preserve what has been achieved by peoples who have struggled for their independence and to avoid a disruption which would deprive the continent of the gains gained by much sacrifice. Essential requirements of stability in order to survive, to develop and gradually to consolidate their independence in all fields, has induced African states judicially to consent to the respecting of colonial frontiers and to take account of it in the interpretation of the principle of self determination of peoples. End of Quotation what holds true for Africa seems to me to apply, and even more so for Latin America, which in fact had served as an example in that respect. In any event, even if I must admit that I am still not entirely clear as to Venezuela's conclusions, it should be noted that if it requests that the award be declared invalid on the ground that it is unjust, this is an appeal in equity on which you cannot rule. As the parties have not agreed to request the court to rule ex eco et bono. That wasn't the case. As regards the lack of reasons, there's nothing particularly new in this matter, and for good reason. On Wednesday, Venezuela's lawyers essentially referred to their previous submissions and are reluctant to accept the principle that be it for the statement of reasons or for all the other grounds of invalidity they allege, the law which shall be taken into consideration is that which was in force at the relevant critical date, I.e. in 1897 or 1899, as regards the rules applicable to the adoption of the award. This is the effect of intertemporal law, a principle which doesn't seem to inspire our opponents much. Only one Professor Palchetti mentioned it in passing and all he had to say on the matter boils down to to something like this. And I quote him, Guyana's emphasis on intertemporal law is only an attempt to mask the grave irregularities committed by the Arbitral Tribunal. It is primarily defensive and fails at that task, end of quote. He did, however, add that the court in the 1906 award of the King of Spain case accepted that lack of reasons was a ground of invalidity at the relevant time. And Professor Palchetti went on to repeat, and I quote him in the Arbitral award made by the King of Spain case, Honduras and Nicaragua accepted that lack of reasons was a ground of invalidity at the relevant time. The court Jura Novit Kuria decided the issue of lack of reason on that very basis, end of quote. In reality, the court accepted nothing of the sort in the 1906 judgment. It did not examine the question from that angle and merely noted that the complaint relating to the lack of reasons was, and I quote without foundation. Professor Oral shall revert to this shortly. And as for the rest, the way in which Professor Tams dealt with the lack of reasons was extremely revealing. He did so by way of preterition and mentioned it as an example of abuse of power, only to forget it immediately. That being said, Mr. President, I wish to state that we by no way, by no means are unaware of the merits of the obligation to state reasons. And indeed, as Venezuela wrote in its counter memorial, and I quote, the fact that an award is accompanied by adequate motivation is the best guarantee that the award has been rendered in accordance with the instructions provided by the parties in the compromise. Yet it should be noted that these advantages struggle to establish themselves as general principle of substantive law with regard to a lack of reasons. Although the concept emerged in 1899, it was not until the Hague Conventions were concluded and applied in practice that it became a generally accepted practice recognized as law. And to cite the International Law Commission, whether a general practice that is accepted as law accompanied by opinio jurist exists must be carefully investigated in each case in the light of the relevant circumstances. Mr. President, I agree with Professor Tams at least on one point. I quote, it is clear how excessive power is to be assessed. It needs to be asked whether a tribunal respected the terms of its mandate. And as the court underscored itself, the tribunal must conform to the terms by which the Parties have defined this task. It is nevertheless necessary to make a careful comparison of the award or other contested action by the Tribunal with the relevant provisions of the compromise. A departure from the terms of submission or excess of jurisdiction should be clear and substantial and not doubtful and frivolous. And this is true whether the Tribunal is accused of ruling within or beyond its jurisdiction. Two accusations which Venezuela does not hesitate to make cumulatively in our case. Referring to the text of Article 3 of the PROMI, Professor Tam stated, and I quote, that there is no doubt that the Tribunal determined the boundary line. It complied with the second task, but not the first. The award is silent on titles. The Tribunal does not tell the parties what it had investigated and ascertained. And on the face of it, this seems a fairly glaring negative excess of power. As with most of the complaints raised by Venezuela, once again we encounter the question of the Statement of Reasons. And whilst they do not expressly state which titles they took into consideration, the arbitrators specified that they investigated and ascertained the extent of the territories belonging to or that might lawfully be claimed by the United Netherlands or by the Kingdom of Spain, respectively, at the time of the acquisition of the by Great Britain of the Colony of British Guyana. End of quote. This is, moreover, clearly what they did, as is evident from the written pleadings and the pleadings during the hearings, and in particular the questions put to the parties by the arbitrators in 1888 and 99. However, above all, as I said on Monday, this argument is artificial, to say the least. Venezuela recognized that the Tribunal fixed the boundary between British Guyana and itself. In so doing, it therefore implicitly determined the extent of both territories. The effect of any judicial decision rendered either in a dispute as to attribution of territory or in a delimitation dispute, is necessarily to establish a front frontier. I quote. Burkina Faso, Mali. I admit that the opposite would not be a convincing reply. If, instead of ruling on the boundaries, the Tribunal had confined itself to indicating the titles it relied on, it would have ruled infra petita. But that is not the case. Having decided on the respective boundaries of both territories at the same time, it implicitly but necessarily ruled on the titles belonging to each of the parties. Mr. President, the complaint of the ultra petita ruling, in fact halved, has been halved between the rejoinder and the Wednesday hearing, which goes to show the seriousness with which it was raised. Gone, then, is the criticism that the award ruled on Brazil's rights. So be it. We still have the assertion, however, according to which I quote, while the Tribunal ignored the first of its two tasks, it decided a further issue which was never submitted to it. In the final section of the award, the Tribunal set out a regime for free navigation on two rivers, the rivers Amakuru and Barima, End of quote. Professor Tams, who valiantly made this assertion before yesterday, offered an analysis of Article 4 of the treaty of Washington which seeks to confine itself to a mere provision concerning the applicable law. What it is in part, but not exclusively, the text of Article 4 is projected in full on your screens. The introductory paragraph extends Article 3 by specifying the Tribunal's task, which is both to establish the facts and to apply the rules which were agreed on. Those are then set out in three subparagraphs, the first of which is mixed, if I may say so. It sets out a rule relating to prescription and then specifies the Tribunal's functions subparagraph B, focusing primarily on the applicable law while leaving a certain margin of appreciation to the arbitrators. And as for subparagraph C, I explained at length on Monday that this is a substantive rule, primary if you will, and explained that I fully concurred with the interpretation which Venezuela's representatives themselves had given of it during their pleading in 1898. Whilst it is true that the parties did not expressly refer to the modification of the regime governing the two rivers, the strongly argued interpretation made by Benjamin Harris, former President of the United States and lead counsel of Venezuela, convincingly leads to the conclusion that such modification did indeed fall within the scope of Article C. Consequently, in fact, the arbitrators certainly did not exceed their powers in holding that reason. Justice, the principle of international law and considerations of equity relevant to the case required that the subjects and citizens of both parties be permitted to freely navigate on both watercourses, which are the main routes of direct access to the sea via the Orinoco River. And to my knowledge, this regime has continued to function satisfactorily to this day without giving rise to any complaints from either party. Members of the court, the 1899 award admittedly failed to state reasons, but with a slight exception, the arbitrators unanimously signed a text indicating that that they had faithfully adhered to the text of the compremie, the text of which is reproduced verbatim in the award. Hence, all five of them acknowledged that they had, and I quote, impartially and carefully examined the questions laid before them and that they had, and I quote, again investigated and ascertained the extent of the territories belonging to or that might lawfully be claimed by the United Netherlands or by the Kingdom of Spain respectively, at the time of the acquisition by Great Britain of the Colony of British Guiana. End of quote. Of the award itself. Five signatures, therefore, from amongst the most renowned jurists of their time, fully aware of what they were doing. Five acts of perjury, that is the question. And all these eminent, qualified and respected jurists would have crafted an award which was allegedly discredited, invalid, unjust, fraudulent, disastrous, deeply shocking, also called a farce, in bad taste, a hoax, a scrap of paper, monstrosity, a relic, a cologne, fruit of British imperialism and extortion, enshrining the spurious interests of the British Empire in collusion with the United States. In itself, the implausibility of this collusion between the members of the tribunal somewhat discredits the conspiracy theory fueled indignation of our opponents and their allegations of fraud and error. And besides, they find it somewhat difficult to distinguish these from the flaws which they had previously laid against the Treaty of Washington which Mettra Reichler dealt with. Therefore, Professor Tams stated on Wednesday that he had relied, and I quote, on accounts that come from key protagonists from the arbitrators in Council, their diaries, their letters and these accounts, of which Venezuela became aware after the publication of the Mali Prevost memorandum, converge on the central point. The boundary line described in the award was put forward by President Martins without any legal basis. End of quote. This calls for at least two series of remarks. Firstly, it is entirely false, as Paul Reichler demonstrated in introducing our pleadings, that Venezuela only became aware of the alleged scheme attributed to Martens once the memorandum. Sorry, the Mali Prevo memorandum had been published, the circumstances. Circumstances surrounding the adoption of the award were well known as soon as it was adopted. And I would also like to point out in passing that the article by La Chanonie, presented as a contemporaneous observer who had taken part in the Paris debates, in fact gave an account of these circumstances which are quite similar to that of Malet Prevost. But I understand why Venezuela decided to maintain the utmost discretion regarding it, despite having introduced it, included it in its case file last week, because by its very existence it discredits the fable or fairy tale it's trying to sell you. Only Professor Pachetti ventured to allude to it, and only to indicate that IT denounces the 1899 arbitration. For having contributed to the dispossession of small states. Secondly, whilst it's exact that Martens did indeed play a major role in the final adoption of the award. In so doing he was merely exercising his function as president of the tribunal fully and in good conscience. In detail. They may well be differences of opinion as to how events unfolded. Possibly because advanced age clouds one's judgment, which would sadden me, but no doubt also because the memory of the witnesses, in particular when they were also party to the events of the case, was selected. But I would say it's especially the interpretation of these events which were reasonably established in the instant case which divided the parties and according to Venezuela. I quote. President Martens threatened the British and American arbitrators to accept his line in separate meetings outside the tribunals formal deliberations because he made clear that unless the two groups he approached, the British and American arbitrators came round to his view, he would endorse the respective other side's claims in full. Well, this is one way of writing history. If we accept the idea that by seeking to save an arbitral award which had to be adopted by the majority and on which two groups of arbitrators held opposite and irreconcilable views, the president of the tribunal overstepped his role and threatened his colleagues. Now, in order to understand how and in which spirit things occurred, it seems legitimate to me to read what the main protagonist, Martens himself wrote about this. During my first intervention on Monday afternoon, I took the liberty, members of the court, to invite you to read the passage of his diary which we included in the judge's folders. Visibly our colleagues and often friends on the other side of the bar did not take the trouble to do so. And the brief extract projected onto the screen does not make up for this omission. But it is highly instructive. I quote. When the disputes between the four arbitrators on the general basis of the forthcoming award ended last Friday I had to deliver my speech. I explained my point of view on all the main issues, denied the horrible right of discovery and occupation of the Spanish and the Americans, proved that there was no definition of those borders in the Treaty of Versailles, and said that the territory between Essequibo and Orinoco can most likely be recognized at a condominium of the Spanish and the Dutch. While presenting my main point of view, I frankly said that I could not acknowledge that the British have the right in Respect of BarimaPoint BP at the mouth of the Orinoco River. This is what Lord Russell and Collins took note of. Mr. President. This is only a very small part of Martin's account of the circumstances in which the award was adopted, it is nonetheless very revealing. First of all, it leaves no doubt whatsoever as to the fact that the president of the tribunal at the beginning formed his own opinion regarding the matters which divided his co arbitrators. It also highlights that this opinion was based on exclusively legal grounds relating to the original title and that resulting from practice with the idea, which one might find somewhat peculiar, of a possible Spanish Dutch condominium, as well as the absence of any British rights over the mouth of the Orinoco River. In procedural or methodological terms, Martin's account attests to his concern to be transparent vis a vis his colleagues. He set out his convictions and, as his notes show, he did so after having sought out theirs. The beginning of the extract of his diary, which still on the screen, also puts paid to the assertion according to which Martens allegedly orchestrated the outcome of the arbitration not in tribunal deliberations, but in a series of meetings, private meetings, insisting that the other arbitrators accept his deal. This was indeed a plenary meeting which followed several other plenaries during which the four arbitrators had expressed irreconcilable views. As can be inferred very precisely from the beginning of the extract on the screen, I quote when the disputes between the four arbitrators on the general basis of the forthcoming award ended last Friday I had to deliver my speech in the next paragraph of his diary, which isn't projected, but which you will find in your folders. Martins wrote, and I quote him once again. That was the end of the Friday session. There was another session on Saturday, but to no avail, and the relationship between the British and American arbitrators became increasingly strained. On Sunday morning there was another session, and again in vain. Then I decided to get down to this issue in a diplomatic manner, end of quote. This by no way reflects the threatening attitude of a tribunal president anxious to see his preconceived view prevail, but indeed that of an open minded person keen to reach a solution, preferably by consensus. This resulted in a series of meetings between Martins and other members of his tribunal, either one to one or with groups of arbitrators. The existence of a deadlock described. This deadlock described by Martens, was confirmed by Judge Brewer, who was appointed as arbitrator by Venezuela. And as he explained in the interview which he gave to the New York Times, which you find in your folders, the discussions between the arbitrators had led them to dig in their heels, so that if they had each had to draw the boundary, they would all have been different. The new method made it possible to break this deadlock, no doubt at the cost of great discretion as regards the reasons. But the experienced jurists who made up the tribunal knew full well that no matter how desirable it might be, a statement of reasons was not yet mandatory. That the consensus might have been reached otherwise through private meetings amongst the arbitrators with a view to discussing the case, is no more reprehensible and does serve in any way to prove the existence of a great conspiracy of which Martens would have been the instigator. Referring to the colorful description given by President Bajawi of the fabrication of the judgments of the International Court of Justice. I imagine, members of the court, that you're not entirely unfamiliar with such practices. Although the circumstances in which you're deliberating are very different from those of tribunal of five members set up over 130 years ago. One thing which our opponents seem to forget, and yet which is common both to your court pursuant to Article 55 of the Statute and the tribunal created in 1897 under Article 5 of the Treaty of Washington, is the majority rule. It sometimes requires sacrifices and compromises from judges and arbitrators, but which alone can make it possible to reach a decision. And it's thanks to the pedagogical and diplomatic tenacity of Martin's. Was he not, after all, both professor and diplomat and the goodwill of his colleagues that the award was ultimately adopted to the immediate satisfaction, more or less enthusiastic on both sides? A satisfaction that was maintained for a long time. And it was in this way that the award was finally adopted. It is under Article 13 of the Treaty of Washington Resjudicata. Our opponents also blame Martins from having in fact imposed an agreement on all the arbitrators. But what would have occurred had he not acted in this way? The other arbitrators were divided two against two. Martins could in fact have maintained his opinion independent view, which in fact he changed in order to reach unanimity without, in fact defending either side. The upshot of that is that no award would have been delivered for want of a majority. Or indeed he could have agreed with one of the two camps, which, as our opponents have pointed out, would have been worse for Venezuela than the award delivered. The fact that he ultimately decided to choose a compromise which was acceptable for the five arbitrators and to reach a unanimous award is not not a shame. On the contrary, it is to his credit the satisfaction on the part of the parties. Sadly, did not last forever. Venezuela broke the consensus. And my friend and colleague Philip Sands will speak about the conditions in which this break took place. With your permission, Mr. President, can I ask you to call him to the podium? Mr. President, members of the court, I thank you once again for your patience and your attention.

Professor Pillai. I thank Professor Pilly. Speaker, the court will observe a break of 10 minutes. The hearing is suspended. Lead be seated. The sitting is resumed. I now give the floor to Professor Philip Sands to the podium. You have the floor, Sir.

Thank you, Mr. President, members of the court, I will respond to arguments made by Venezuela on three related issues. First, the significance of the Malay Prevost memorandum. Second, the propriety of the arbitral process and the award. Third, the claim that the award, the 1905 boundary agreement and subsequent practice reflect a legacy of colonial wrongdoing. I begin with the significance of the Malet Prevost memorandum. On Wednesday, counsel for Venezuela made various arguments about that document. Professor Ramiro Breton said its publication facilite the claim the 1899 award was invalid. From plausibility to fact, he said for Professor Tams. Only after the publication of the male Prevo memorandum did Venezuela become aware that the boundary line described in the award was put forward by President Martins without any legal basis. For Professor Touvner, the memorandum quite simply changed everything. Offered proof that the award was produced by extortion. It's the missing link, he said, which shows the compromise had nothing to do with the legal decision. And was the fruit of blackmail. Fighting words for these council, the Malle Prevost memorandum has a clear purpose. It offers a rationale. The rationale to explain why Venezuela accepted The award for 63 years, never challenges its validity, and then suddenly and abruptly changes its position in 1960. The argument is tosh. It's a fiction, and it suffers from fatal problems. First, it doesn't and cannot explain the silence from 1949 to 1962, when Venezuela first repudiated the award. Thirteen years of silence and nothingness. That is, by any reasonable standard, a very significant period. Second, counsel's plea is factually inaccurate. Venezuela already had all the information it now says was newly available in 1949, with the publication of the award and the press reports and interviews that followed. And Professor Oral will add to what I have to say. The award was handed down six days after the hearing ended. Incidentally, in the early phase of the world of arbitration, this is not an unusually short period. I refer you to the Pious Fund of California's case. 13 days. The River St. Croix case 10 days and the Halifax Fisheries Commission case two days with the award of 10-3-1899. Venezuela knew then that it did not contain any reasoning, that it instituted a navigational regime on two rivers and that it delimited the party's respective territories without stating their titles. Two more Tamsian sins. Mallet Prevost's memorandum offered nothing new in this regard. Within two days of the award being handed down, it was the subject of active discussion in the Press. On 5 October 1899, the New York Times ran an article entitled Judge Brewer's Opinion Final Award a Compromise. He is quoted as until the last moment I believed a decision would be quite impossible. And it was by the greatest conciliation and mutual concessions that a compromise was arrived at. If any of us had been asked to give an award, each would have given one differing in extent and character. The consequence of this was that we had to adjust our differing views and finally to draw a line running between what each thought was right. Please read the article in full. It's in your Judges folder at tab 6.3. Judge Brewer was explicitly asked whether political considerations influenced the award, and he appeared to accept that they did. He made it clear that each judge conceded something in turn. Similarly, A day earlier, 4 October 1899, the Times of London ran an even lengthier article and that included an interview with General Harrison and Mr. Malet Prevost. In their interview they emphasized the positive aspects of the award that it gave Venezuela the entire control of the Orinoco river and another long tract to the east of the schomburg line, some 3,000 square miles in extent, and that various other British claims were rejected. Now Venezuela's two council noted President Martin's closing address in the interview they gave to the paper in which he commented on the unanimity of the judgment as proof of the success of the arbitration. The article summarized the views of the two council, Harrison and Malet Prevost. It did not, however, require much intelligence to penetrate behind Martin Martin's superficial statement and see that the line was drawn, a line of compromise and not a line of right. And they go on. There was nothing in the history of the controversy, nor in fact in the legal principle involved, which could adequately explain why the line should be drawn as it was now found. In other words, the arbitration did not result in an admission of legal rights. It was based on compromises, really diplomatic in their character and they also understood and publicly expressed. The day after the award the pressures on the arbitrators if the arbitrators were unanimous, it must be because their failure to agree. Would have confirmed Great Britain in the possession of even more territory. These two newspaper articles were published within two days of the award. It was public. It was available. It was plainly known to Venezuela. No doubt, Mr. Malet Prevot and President Harrison will have said even more privately to their client. Did this information cause Venezuela to object to the award? It did not. It negotiated and signed a treaty in 1905. To implement the award for the next 57 years. It faithfully gave effect to that treaty and the award it implemented. Not a squeak of opposition, no claim of invalidity or taint for 62 years in the face of all that information. In short, Venezuela's actions were taken in the full knowledge of the following. First, the award was handed down six days after the hearing closed. Second, it contained no statement of reasoning. Third, it was based on diplomatic compromises. Fourth, it was not based on the application as such of legal principles or legal rights. And fifth, the arbitrators were pressured into compromises. They had the opportunity to express different views. But they elected not to do so. On the basis that unanimity would avoid a worse situation. Is there evidence here of extortion or blackmail, as Professor Touvenau would have you believe. No, there is not. He uses very strong words. The Oxford English Dictionary defines extortion as the action or practice of extorting or recognizing anything, especially money, from a person by force or by undue exercise of authority or power. An act of illegal exaction. Is there evidence that Dr. Martin's threatened force. Or engaged in any undue exercise of authority? There is none. Not a shred of evidence. Even assuming the Malet Prevost memorandum to be accurate. And we have no idea whether it is. It does no more than describe a tribunal president's efforts to gain consensus. By warning that a majority award is likely to be less attractive. In one way or another. This is a constant feature of arbitral deliberation. Still today I have experienced it. And many of you in this room will have experienced it. The striving for consensus is an act of decency and wisdom. That Mr. Martin's achieved it is to his credit, not to his detriment. As the Times reported in October, 1899, if the arbitrators were unanimous, it must be because their failure to agree Would have confirmed Great Britain in the possession of even more territory. And that was what Mr. Martins wished to avoid. Now, in the very short period after the award, everyone knew what had passed. I would invite you to imagine that you are attending the meeting of the American Society of International law in Washington, D.C. to hear the address by John W. Foster, former President Harrison's Secretary of State. His address was on the subject of British and American arbitral practice. This is 1911. He explicitly addresses the 1899 award, and this is what he has to say about it. The British and American members of the court held to the position taken by their respective governments, and the Russian umpire sought to find a middle ground which would be the least distasteful to his colleagues. He was not a lawyer by profession, but had received his training in the Russian Foreign Office, and his decision was one of expediency and compromise. While it was largely in favor of the British contention, it was quietly understood at the time that it would have been even more in that direction but for the firm attitude of the American members. Mr. Foster talked in that address about other arbitral awards. What was his conclusion about the totality of international practice at that period in time? I quote, I would not have it understood that I condemn the general results of these arbitrations. They have been beneficial, but the defects of the system are so serious that they call for the reform to be found in a permanent international tribunal. And that's one of the reasons we are here today in this great hall of justice at the International Court of justice. That was 1911. Twenty years later, Professor Hersch Lauterpacht wrote of the 1899 award in his seminal 1933 book, the Function of Law in the International Community. You'll find extracts of it in the folder at tab 4.1. Did Professor Lauterpacht criticize the award as counsel have done? He did not. To the contrary, he described the proceedings as a lengthy legal contest on such questions as acquisition of title by occupation, discovery and prescription, and on such procedural technicality as the function of estoppel in relations between states. He understood the Arbitral Award to be exactly what it was, a creature of its early times, one that sought to resolve a political dispute. Those are his words, based on an 1897 treaty that conferred on the tribunal what Hirsch Lauter Pact characterized as, and I quote, large discretionary powers. Everybody knew what had passed with the award and the outcome, 1899, 1911, 1933. And Venezuela itself confirmed this in 1962, at the very moment that it adopted its change of position. When Venezuela's foreign Minister addressed the UN General assembly on the 1st of October of that year, he invoked the Malet Prevost memorandum and said that it coincides with the widely held view from the very moment of the Court's award, namely, that the award was the outcome of a political compromise rather than the application of the rules of law to which the parties had agreed. Did Venezuela object in 1899? No, it did not. Did it object in 1905? No. Or in 1949 when the memorandum became available? No. So with great respect, it is simply not open to Venezuela to argue today, or as it did in 1962, that Malet Prevost somehow gave them something new. It did not. The only thing that was new in that document, magical realism, was the claim of an Anglo Russian deal prompting the outcome. And of course there is no support whatsoever for that. And no doubt, as you will have heard while you were listening very carefully on Wednesday, Venezuela now places no reliance at all on that outlandish claim. It passed in complete silence on the point which must be taken to be abandoned. I refer you to our written pleadings, our memorial on the merits and in our reply for the reasons that it could not be true. So what is really going on here? What are we actually addressing in this courtroom? We submit that the real clue is to be found in the Foreign Minister's speech to the UN General assembly on 1 October 1962. Mr. Brisenio invoked Venezuela's supposed, and I quote, inflexible anti colonial position, end of quote. And he segued from that directly via a fig leaf to the question of boundaries between Venezuela and the territory of British Guyana. In other words, as Mr. Reichler hinted, British Guyana's desire for independence offered a wonderful opportunity to reopen for the first time, after 63 years, the path to resolve a lingering unhappiness about the substantive outcome of the award and the 1905 treaty. Thirteen years after it is published, the Malay Prevost memorandum is instrumentalized, it is weaponized, it is used for another purpose to reopen an issue that has long been settled. And that is why Council for Venezuela have to argue that the memorandum gave them something new, even though it did nothing of the sort. The Malay Prevo memorandum is used in the service of an anti colonialist claim to attack what Council called the revolting 1899 awards on the ground that it set in stone a colonial legacy. And this became clear to me, a sort of dropping of the penny as I listened to my good friend, my brother, Professor Mbenge, on Wednesday morning as he waxed lyrically and passionately about the evils of Columbia colonialism. To be fair, the seeds for his argument were sown in Venezuela's counter memorial and in its rejoinder. This case, he told you, is an illustration of the unfortunate legacies of colonialism. And he invited you to draw inspiration from the approach taken by this court in the Chagos advisory opinion, which he initially described as a direct precedent. But then there was a modest retreat, as he recognized, as he is bound to do that quote. Well, it might be said that the 1899 award is different. It might indeed be said that it's different. And I'm going to tell you that it's different. Chagos offers no assistance whatsoever to Venezuela. It is totally different. Mauritius was not the recipient of an arbitral award. Mauritius did not negotiate a treaty with the United Kingdom recognizing Chagos as part of the United Kingdom. And Mauritius did not wait 63 years to assert a claimed right. Now, Professor Mbenge knows that I am not the kind of person who's going to stand before this court and defend acts of great colonial wrongdoing. He also knows that he and I are both very familiar with the Chagos matter. We both argued it. And he knows, as I know, that it's a totally different story. The Chagos advisory opinion is premised on the Court's recognition of a fundamental principle. When a colony achieves independence. Independence, Its territorial boundaries as an independent state will be the same as those of the former colony unless the population of that territory has freely given its consent for those boundaries to be changed. And in Chagos, the Court and two distinguished dissenters in another arbitral proceeding found that the population of Mauritius had not freely consented to the excision of the Chagos archipelago. That principle, relied on by the court in Chagos, is based on UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 of 1960, which you know well, and paragraph six of that resolution prohibits the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territory integrity of a country. Resolution was adopted in December 1960. Venezuela voted in support of it. Did Venezuela, in exercising that vote, articulate a reservation in relation to the territory of British Guyana or its own territory at that session of the General assembly in 1960? No, it did not. And that is because that was two years before it concocted the idea of opening the door to an argument that the 1899 award was invalid at the moment it voted for Resolution 1514. It still accepted its boundaries as they had existed for more than six 60 years as established by the Arbitral Award and the 1905 treaty. It only changed its position two years after that resolution was adopted. Coincidentally, or maybe not at the Very moment that the independence of Guyana suddenly hoved into view. And as Mr. Reichler made clear, in the face of a real fear that Venezuela might. Might act to interfere with the national unity or territorial integrity of a newly independent guyana, the united kingdom insisted on what became the 1966 Geneva Agreement being negotiated and adopted. It committed venezuela to a process to resolve the controversy by peaceful means on the validity of the 1899 award in a manner that in no way undermined the totality of Guyana's territorial integrity. Now, professor mbenge, better than anyone, will understand the challenges his argument on Wednesday will pose for this court. He knows far better than I all about the organization of African Unity's famous nineteen 1964 Cairo Declaration, when the heads of state and government came together of african countries to declare that all member states had pledged to respect the borders existing on their achievement of national independence. And he will be aware, too, of the powerful statement made by the permanent representative of Kenya to the United nations in February 2022, on the cusp of Russia's invasion of ukraine, and I quote, kenya and almost every african country was birthed by the ending of Empire. Dr. Kimani told the security council, our borders were not of our own drawing. They were drawn in the distant colonial metropoles of London, paris and lisbon, with no regard for the ancient nations that they cleaved upon. But, he continued, we agreed that we would settle for the borders that we inherited, not because these borders were satisfactory, but because we wanted something greater forged in peace. We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression. And we say those words are especially pertinent now and to these proceedings because if this court is to accede to professor mbenge's invitation and find invalid the 1899 arbitral award and presumably also the 1905 treaty. You would rekindle the embers of dead empires. You would plunge guyana into a new form of domination and oppression in relations with its much larger neighbor. And you would send a signal to the world that the passage of six decades is no binding to setting aside an arbitral award or a boundary treaty. You would rekindle an age of instability and uncertainty, One that would run directly contrary to the wisdom of africa, One that would threaten to open the gates of challenge to any and every colonial era arbitration award or boundary settlement. Is that really what professor mbengi is asking you to do? Is that really what this court is being asked to do by Venezuela? Mr. President. It was indeed uncomfortable understatement for Guyana to hear it suggested that as a state, it is an inheritor of an act of British colonial wrongdoing, that it seeks to defend a revolting colonial legacy. These are really unfortunate suggestions. Guyana emerged into independence with a strong sense of identity and that was formed in large part by a sense of its territorial identity. And ever since it came into independence, it has existed under an existential threat of dismemberment. In this way, it is no different from so many African countries or Central and Eastern European countries or other countries of Latin America which have emerged in their modern form out of the legacies of colonialism. That legacy may indeed be a scourge, but the greater scourge will be to open the gates to the setting aside of an award and a treaty that are more than a century old. And that is what Venezuela is asking you to do. That is what we feel sure you must resist. Mr. President, members of the court, that concludes my submissions. I end, as I always do, with an expression of thanks to my colleagues, Mr. Edward Craven and Ms. Lucy Jones, for their assistance in preparing my words over this week. But if I may, I would also like to just momentarily express my respect to Sir Sridath Rumfeld and Ms. Liz Harper, who guided us over the years of this case. For many of us, Sir Sridath was truly a mentor. And not long before he left us, he sent me a postcard of a painting that he told me he loved by the renowned Guyanese and British artist Sir Frank Bowling. It is today at the Tate Gallery in London. Who's Afraid of Barney? Newman? Was painted in 1968, just two years after Guyana achieved independence. If you look carefully, you will see in this painting the outlines of two continents, South America and Africa, slipped into the vertical blocks of green, yellow and red. References to Guyana and various African flags and adornments worn by Jamaican Rastafarians. When Bolling was born in Burima in 1934, Venezuela accepted that this small town was in Guyana and that he was Guyanese. But today it does not. And so in this way, it could be said this painting is emblematic of many of the issues that have been heard in this great hall of justice. Matters of history, of connections, of the need for things to be whole and of the power and the finality of law. And that is why Sonny sent me the postcard. The painting is a hole. And a hole we trust it must remain. I thank you, Mr. President, for your attention and I invite you to call Professor Nourfa Oral to the podium.

I thank Professor Sands. I now give the floor to Professor Nyufa Oral. You have the floor, Madam.

Mr. President, distinguished members of the court, it is my great pleasure to appear before you again. Venezuela's council have relied extensively on vituperative statements and a touch of demagoguery, making every effort to avoid the facts. Today I will bring us back to the reality of the facts. Now, my distinguished colleagues today have just clearly demonstrated, based on facts and law, that the 1899 award was and is a valid award. However, Arguand, or in plain English, for the sake of argument, let us say Venezuela did have grounds to challenge the validity of the award. Venezuela would still face a formidable obstacle, its own conduct for more than half a century. In an attempt to overcome this major obstacle, as Professor Sands has just presented, Venezuela relies heavily on the improbable excuse that it was not aware of any of the alleged defects of the 1899 award until the publication of the 1949 Malay Prevost memorandum 50 years after the award was issued. For 50 years, they said they had no inkling that any grounds existed to challenge the validity of the award. Really? In 1899, within days after receiving the award and at all times thereafter, Venezuela was well aware of all the circumstances underlying the award and its purported defects. Every one of the defects alleged by Venezuela in these proceedings, every single one one was known to Venezuela soon after the award was issued, if not immediately upon its issuance. Now, Mr. President, I know we're running out of time, so with your permission, and if the court and the interpreters could please turn to paragraph eight. Now, from what my learned colleagues have just, just presented today, the following conclusions are inevitable. 1. Venezuela was fully aware in 1899, or at least by 1900, of each and every ground it now asserts for invalidating the award. Two, There is no evidence that Venezuela faced any pressure whatsoever, let alone coercion, to refrain from, from asserting a challenge between 1899 and 1962. 3. Under the applicable law, Venezuela acquiesced in the award and lost the right to challenge it long before it first did so in 1962. Venezuela has simply not been able to refute this factual reality. The real farce, to use Venezuela's Count Council's word, is that evidence of supposed defects in the award came into Venezuela's possessions, quote, only in the second half of the 20th century. On Monday we presented an abundance of facts and supporting law demonstrating the consistent, express and complicit conduct of Venezuela accepting and strictly implementing the boundary as decided by the 1899 award and demarcated by the 1905 boundary agreement. We showed some 16 maps dating from 1905 until 1962 consistently reflecting the 1899 award and the 1905 agreement to the letter. No indications of any protest to the boundary even after the publication of the 1949 Malay Prevo memorandum. There is nothing from Venezuela to refute any of this. This is why the only explanation that Venezuela can offer to counter what they know to be unassailable evidence against them is their lack of awareness until the publication of the 1949 Mali Previs Memorandum. The reality simply does not support Venezuela claims of ignorance. Professor Sands has just skillfully deconstructed this argument based on the Malay Prevo Memorandum. However, there was one legal point related to Venezuela's reliance on the Malay Prevo Memorandum. If we accept that the facts took place in the Mele Prevo Memorandum are true, this means Malay Prevost himself after his meeting with Justice Brewer had firsthand knowledge of the compromise taking place and together with Venezuela's lead counsel Mr. Harrison agreed to the deal offered. In other words, Venezuelan Council were instrumental to the political compromise as according to the memo Justice Brewer had asked asked for their approval. How can Venezuela now claim error when its very own Council participated in the so called compromise that resulted in the boundary line which they allegedly told Justice Brewer they would accept? This Court said in the Temple of Preah Vihir case it is an established rule of law that the plea of error error cannot be allowed as an element vitiating consent if the party advancing it contributed by its own conduct to the error or could have avoided it or if the circumstances were such as to put that party on notice of a possible error. The most telling proof that Venezuela was well aware of any possible defects in the award and contemplating challenges challenging the award is found in the 4 May 1900 report by Venezuelan jurist and former foreign minister Dr. Rafael Cejas. The reality is that there were no grants to challenge the award. In this report he advised Venezuela on the following key issues. First, on the lack of reason by the Tribunal and the award. He wrote that the 1897 treaty, quote did not stipulate any requirement to give reasons for its that is the Tribunal's decision end quote and therefore quote does not permit any complaint on the score. Plainly Venezuelan UN 1899 at the moment of issue that the award did not include a statement of reason and as of 1900 it did not consider this a valid ground for challenging the award. No one Defrauded, no one coerced it. On the question of the arbitrators, Dr. Seyas also negated this as a reason to challenge the award, highlighting that Venezuela have participated in the selection of the arbitrators and could be challenged to have, quote, uttered no word in opposition. According to the Cejas report, when Justice Brewer was asked, quote, if in his judgment Venezuela had title to more than a judge to it, he hesitated, shrugged his shoulders and said it was better to say nothing on this point, and ended by observing that whoever or whatever the two parties thought of the award Venezuela would receive Punta Barima, which gives her full control of the hinterland, while England is confirmed in the possession of a territory in the development of which it has dispersed such money and effort. But the main advantage is that the two nations can at last cultivate peacefully, side by side, the extensive territories which, because of previous antagonisms, have remained unproductive. After a detailed discussion on the issue of the freedom of navigation, Cejas concludes his report with the following words. Despite the foregoing exposition, I considered that it would not be expedient to reopen the case and appoint other arbitrators or to extend the jurisdiction of those who have served as such. Since her mandate ended with the pronouncement of the award, what more compelling evidence can we show than the legal advice provided by Venezuela's own expert in international law, Dr. Cejas, a respected jurist, a former foreign Minister, who in 1900 provided his legal views on all the possible reasons now claimed by Venezuela to challenge the award, but Venezuela took no action before 1962. In his own words, Venezuela cannot have its cake and eat it too. It cannot selectively use the SEAS report as evidence of so called structural coercion, which frankly is a stretched interpretation of his words, and then also conveniently omit the parts of his report that show Venezuela was looking at grounds to challenge the legality of the award and found none. This brings me to my second point concerning the so called structural coercion that Venezuela now claims for the first time after some 120 plus years, that it was because of fear from the powerful naval forces of Great Britain that Venezuela for five years engaged in the demarcation of the 825 kilometer boundary. There is absolutely no evidence before the court that Great Britain in 1900, before the blockade Venezuela relies on to claim it was structurally coerced, threatened any military action against Venezuela after the 1899 award to force it to engage in the demarcation process. Au contraire, the evidence shows that Great Britain remained loyal, loyal to the 1899 boundary and never once attempted to cross it or expand it and never once threatened to do so. The award accomplished Venezuela's objective in seeking arbitration. It halted permanently the westward advance of British settlement. The evidence we showed on Monday from the vigilant and dedicated workers of Chief Commissioner Dr. Tirado and the pride he expressed in his work and the insistence of Venezuela to abide strictly to the 1899 award to the letter completely refute any claim that Venezuela now makes some 120 plus years later of being forced against its will to demarcate the boundary. Words by overzealous counsel alone cannot compensate for objective and established facts. For credible and contemporaneous evidence, I will now proceed to the legal issues. Venezuela's post award conduct goes beyond mere silence, but as we have shown with ample evidence, it includes express war words amounting to acceptance, recognition and satisfaction with having received what at the time in 1899 was what Venezuela most desired, the mouth of the Orinoco River. These are not my sentiments, but the very words from Venezuela's council and its officials, the Foreign Minister and the President expressed satisfaction. This is in black and white and it is contemporary. To be sure, Venezuela was disappointed that it did not get more territory, as you were told on Wednesday, but also by colleagues on Monday. But it cannot be the case that a party's disappointment with the substance of an award or a judgment of the court constitutes grounds for its invalidation. Venezuela's attempt to distinguish the King of Spain case also fails on on this point. Like the President of Nicaragua, the President of Venezuela, Mr. Ignacio Andrade, also publicly expressed satisfaction with the 1899 award just one week later. And I repeat, the award was a source of satisfaction for the country as international justice had returned a part of its territory that had been usurped and vindicated its right. There is a reason for the satisfaction, in the words of Venezuela's Council, on the importance of the mouth of the Orinoco river, quote no portion of the entire territory possess more strategic value than this, both from a commercial and a military standpoint. But the King of Spain case was not the only judgment of this court. Of this court we refer to where the conduct of the state was decided. We discussed the Temple of Priya Vijir case, to which Venezuela did not respond. In that case, the absolute key factor was the conduct of Siam and later Thailand on the use of maps. We presented 16 official maps between the dates of 1905 and 1962, all showing the very same boundary, the one determined by the arbitrary ward in 1899 and demarcated by Great Britain and Venezuela in 1905. There is no response from Venezuela on this, not one. I take the opportunity, and with the Court's indulgence, to quote another very important part of the Temple of Priya Vija case with significance for our case at least during the 60 plus years between 1899 and 191962 before Venezuela engaged in aggressive conduct against Guyana threatening the stability of the boundary had respected beforehand. Even if there were any doubt as to Siam's acceptance of the map in 1908 and hence of the frontier indicated thereon, the Court would consider in the light of the subsequent course of events that Thailand is now present, precluded by her conduct from asserting that she did not accept it. She has for 50 years enjoyed such benefits as the treaty of 1904 conferred on her, if only the benefit of a stable frontier. France and through her Cambodia relied on Thailand's acceptance of the map. It is not now open to Thailand while continuing to claim enjoy the benefits of the settlement to deny that she was ever a consenting party. The Court's words have much bearing today on the current case. Venezuela also relies on the Costa Rica and Panama case in an attempt to counter 60 plus years of post award conduct during which Venezuela not simply recognized but actively implemented the boundary until 1962, the arbitrator in that case did not take into account post award conduct. It was not at issue. The case is irrelevant. Whereas the two cases we have cited, the King of Spain case and the Temple of Priya Vija case, turned expressly on the conduct of the parties. As for the DRC vs Uganda case, frankly, counsel for Venezuela omitted an important part of the Court's decision. The Court observed that waivers or renunciations of claims or rights must either be express or unequivocally implied from the conduct of the state. Uganda was simply unable to present evidence of the conduct as expressed in the Court's views. I'm going to continue. By contrast contrast, Guyana has presented a mountain of evidence, 60 plus years of unequivocal conduct by Venezuela accepting and implementing the award and the 1905 agreement while fully aware of any possible challenges it could have raised at the time. As it made clear in the detailed report dated 4th May 1900 by Dr. Cejas, Professor Thuran also attempted to distinguish this King of Spain case from the present case on rather weak reasons, one being that Nicaragua did not assert lack of awareness. But this is not true. Nicaragua actually The President of Nicaragua, in dispatching his telegram of 25 December 1906 specifically gave the reason that he was not aware of the actual terms of the award. Mr. President, I come now to my conclusion. We have presented the facts of the law as they are no more and no less. The reality, as we have highlighted Monday and reinforced today is that Venezuela had all the information in plain sight 127 years ago and chose not to challenge the award. It is a complete fiction that Venezuela was not able to challenge the award until after the 1949 Malay Prevo memorandum was published. Venezuela's post award conduct was not simply passive silence, but one that proactively implemented and complied with the award and the agreement. The narrative of structural coercion to excuse their conduct which appeared for time the first first time in their counter memorial dated 8th April 2025 is simply not tenable and certainly cannot be the basis for depriving Guyana of more than 70% of territory over which it has lawfully exercised sovereignty as an independent state since 1966. I thank the Court for its kind attention and ask that Venezuela's Attorney General, General and Minister of Legal affairs, the Honorable Mohabir Anil Nandlal, be called to the podium.

I thank Professor Holla. I now invite the Attorney General, Guyana, the Hon. Muhammad Anil Nallal, to address the court. Sir, you have the floor.

Mr. President, members of the Court, it is an honor to appear before you and a privilege to deliver this final presentation on behalf of my country, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. It is difficult to express in words how important this case is to Guyana and its people. As the Court knows, this hearing is the culmination of a process which has been decades in Limiki. For more than 60 years, Venezuela has laid claim to more than 70% of Guyana's sovereign territory. Generations of Guyanese, mine being one of them, have grown up under the long and threatening shadow caused by Venezuela's claim to nearly three quarters of our country. Venezuela's claim has blighted, bedeviled and burdened Guyana for the entirety of its life as a sovereign state. It is hard to overstate the impact that this has had on Guyana. Guyana's development and on the security, prosperity and well being of its people as our representatives vividly described and must. The loss of the territory claimed by Venezuela would eviscerate Guyana. Indeed, the country as we know it would cease to exist. Guyana's Foreign Minister was not exaggerating when he described this case as having an existential quality for Guyana. For Guyana and its people, the stakes could scarcely be higher. But while the stakes of this dispute could not be higher, nor could Guyana's faith in international law as the means for fairly and finally resolving it. As Attorney General of Guyana, I can personally attest to Guyana's profound commitment to the rule of international law. It is a commitment which runs deep in Guyana's institutions and national culture. It is both both an article of faith and a source of national pride. It is founded on a firm conviction that international law is the bedrock of the international order and the indispensable foundation for peaceful relations between all states. From Guyana's perspective, there is no higher value or greater imperative than responsibility respect for international law. Mr. President, when Guyana brought its application to the court in 2018, it was confident of three things. First, Guyana had unwavering confidence in the correctness of its decision regarding the validity of the 1899 award and the boundary which it determined. Second. Second, Guyana was equally confident in the wisdom of the decision of the Secretary General of the United nations that the Court should be entrusted with resolving this intractable controversy. Third, Guyana had complete confidence in the independence and impartiality of the Court and its ability to deliver a just outcome based on the fear minded and even handed application of international law. Since Guyana filed its application eight years ago, these proceedings have vindicated and reinforced Guyana's confidence in each of those things. At every stage, the Court has conducted the proceedings with conspicuous care, attentiveness and fairness. The Court has carefully considered and confirmed its jurisdiction to entertain Guyana's application and it has carefully considered and confirmed the admissibility of that application. We have no doubt that the Court will now proceed to carefully consider the merits of Guyana's case regarding the validity of the 1899 award and the location of the Party's land boundary. Since the start of these procedures proceedings, Venezuela has trained every sinew to avoid the Court delivering a judgment on the merits of Guyana's application. These strenuous efforts have even continued throughout this hearing on the merits. Notwithstanding this Court's judgment in 2020 and 2023, Venezuela has sought to argue that the terms of the Geneva Agreement mean that a Court cannot or should not rule upon the validity of the 1899 award. Guyana's council have demonstrated the lack of merit in those arguments which find no support in the text or the history of the Geneva Agreement and which are contradicted by Venezuela's previous statements to the Court and so clearly by the pellucid terms of the Court's previous judgments on jurisdiction and admissibility. It is not hard to see why Venezuela is so reluctant for the court to determine the merits of Guyana's application. Venezuela knows that it has no good answer to Guyana's case, and it knows that a judgment on the merits should bring to an end Venezuela Venezuela's claims to almost 160,000 square kilometers of Guyana's territory. In its written and oral pleadings, Guyana has convincingly demonstrated that Venezuela's attempt to impugn the validity of the 1897 Treaty of Washington has no merit whatsoever. Venezuela was neither deceived nor coerced into signing the treaty. On the contrary, the treaty achieved what for years Venezuela had desired and demanded the submission of its boundary dispute with Great Britain to international arbitration. Guyana has similarly and axiomatically demonstrated that Venezuela's attack on the validity of the 1899 award award itself is misconceived. Neither the absence of written reasons nor the timing of the award's delivery calls into question its validity. The Arbitral Tribunal faithfully fulfilled the mandate conferred by the 1897 treaty. Neither the terms of the award nor the way it was reached involved any excess of power or improper by the eminent members of the Tribunal. What is more, Guyana has shown that when the award was delivered in 1899, Venezuela was aware of all the matters which it now alleges vitiated the award. Yet for more than 60 years after 1899, Venezuela respected, asserted, and affirmed the validity of the award. As Guyana has shown at this hearing, Venezuela has no credible answer to any of this. In short, the award was and remains valid and binding on the parties. In the words of the 1897 treaty, the award constitutes the full, perfect and final settlement of the boundary between Venezuela, Venezuela, and Guyana. At this juncture I feel impelled to say a brief word about one of Venezuela's argument, which struck a particularly discordant note in Guyanese ears. As Professor Sanz explained earlier, Venezuela's attempt to invoke the law of decolonization to support its case is legally unfounded. But it is also ironic because Venezuela's sudden repudiation of the 1899 award in the 1960s, just as the process of Guyana's decolonization was underway, impeded and delayed Guyana's progress towards independence by several years. And in the years since Guyana attained independence in 1966, Venezuela has acted in a way that has striking echoes of the imperial colonialists whom it rightly denounces. As Guyana has explained, both in its written and oral pleadings since 1966. Venezuela has repeatedly denied and violated Guyana's sovereignty over its Essequibo region. Venezuela has invaded and illegally occupied Guyana's territory on Ankoko Islands for six decades. It has conducted numerous other military incursions into Guyana's land and maritime territory, incursions which are intended to menace and intimidate Guyana and its people. During the pendency of these proceedings and in contumacious defiance of this Court's provisional Measures Orders, Venezuela has enacted legislation which purports to incorporate our Essequibo region as a new Venezuelan state to subjected to the jurisdiction of Venezuela's legislative, executive and judicial organs and to depict in official maps as an depicted in official maps as an integral part of Venezuela. Venezuela has also sought to rename the territory as Guiana Essequiba. It has even falsely claimed, as this hearing, that the Essequibo river was named after a Spanish explorer. The name of the Essequibo river is in fact derived from an indigenous word, Dixiquibo, meaning fireside, which was later adopted by the Dutch and the British. Venezuela's attempts to annex its smaller neighbor's territory, its attempts to erase and rewrite the history of Guyana's Essequibo region and its innumerable bellicose threats to Guyana's sovereignty and territorial integrity are all redolent of colonialism. Mr. President and members of the Court, the judgment that you deliver in this case will be of exceptional importance to Guyana. It is not simply the outcome of the judgment that will be important important. The terms of the judgment will be equally crucial. If the Court accepts Guyana's arguments as we are confident that it will, then it is essential that the Court's judgment directly, explicitly and unambiguously affirms the validity of the 1899 award in its intention, integrity and the boundary which it established and elucidates the ineluctable legal consequences which flow therefrom. Any ambiguity or qualification in the course judgment will inevitably be seized upon by Venezuela as a basis for continuing to lay vast swaths of guidance. Guyana's sovereign territory lay claim to vast swaths of Guyana's sovereign territory. The clarity and specificity of your judgment are final to the are vital to the effective resolution of this long standing dispute. You will have heard, as we did, the suggestion that a judgment in favor of Guyana would not end the decision dispute. That suggestion underscores the need for a clear and complete judgment. Mr. President and members of the Court, thank you very much indeed for your patient attention and I now respect respectfully I now request, respectfully, that you invite our agent, Mr. Carl Greenwich, to the podium to read Guyana's submissions. I thank you.

Once again, I thank the Attorney General of Guyana. I now give the floor to agent of Guyana, the Honorable Carl Greenwich, to make Guyana's final submissions. You have the first, sir.

Mr. President, members of the Court, it is an honor to appear before you once again. With your permission, Mr. President, I will now close Guyana's oral pleadings by reading Guyana's submissions in accordance with Article 494 and Article 62 of the Rules of Court. For the reasons explained in our written pleadings and during these hearings, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana respectfully requests the International Court of Justice to adjudge and declare 1. That the 1899 award is valid and binding upon Guyana and Venezuela and that the boundary established by that award and the 1905 agreement is the boundary between Guyana and Venezuela. 2. That Guyana enjoys full sovereignty over the territory between their equivalents river and the boundary established by the 1899 award and the 1905 agreement and Venezuela is under an obligation to fully respect Guyana's sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the boundary established by the 1899 award and the 1905 agreement. 3. That Venezuela has failed to comply with the obligations set out in the orders of 1 December 2023 and 1 May 2025. 4. That as a consequence of all the foregoing, Venezuela must A. Withdraw from any part of Guyana's territory as defined under the award, including the part of Ankoko island that the award attributed to Guyana. B. Refrain from asserting or purporting to exercise sovereignty over any part of Guyana's territory and from taking any actions that violate Guyana's sovereignty or territorial integrity as defined in the award. C. Revoke by means of its own choosing all measures, including laws, decrees and any other act that purport to annex, administer or control any part of Guyana's territory or that was otherwise enacted or taken in violation of the provisional measures ordered by the court and in particular, 1. Repeal the legislation which proved purports to incorporate Ghana's sovereign territory within Venezuela and the legislation which purports to extend Venezuela's legislative, executive and judicial jurisdiction to that territory. 2. Dissolve any entity to which Venezuela has attributed powers over Guyana's territory, such as the High Commission for the Defense of Guyana, Esquiba, as well as all other executive, legislative and administrative agencies created to exercise such powers. 3. Terminate the social care plan for the population of Guyana, Esikuba and any ongoing census of the population of Guyana's territory as well as as all military activities conducted in furtherance of Venezuela's attempt to exercise sovereignty over, annex, administer or control any part of Guyana's territory and refrain this is for from publicly claiming or teaching its people that the award is a nullity or the outcome of a fraudulent protest, or that Venezuela was wrongly deprived of the Essequibo region and withdraw from all public institutions and facilities Revoke and destroy any map depicting any part of Guyanese territory as defined by the award as part of Venezuela. 3. Mr. President, allow me in closing to express on Guyana's behalf, President Dr. Mohamed Urfanali, Guyana's Government, its delegation and its people our profound gratitude to the members of the Court for the care, patience and attention you have devoted to these proceedings. We also wish to convey our sincere appreciation to the Registrar and wish to thank him, to wish him well as the end of his time at the Court is approaching. We express too our sincere gratitude to the staff of the Court and interpreters for their unfailing professionalism, courtesy and dedication which have greatly contributed to the orderly and efficient conduct of this hearing. Finally, I would like to extend all his respect and warm regards to all the distinguished members of the Venezuelan delegation. We have greatly appreciated their presence throughout these proceedings in the Great hall of justice. Mr. President, members of the court, this concludes Guyana's second round. I thank you very much indeed.

I thank the agent of Guyana for the final submissions presented on behalf of his Government. This brings to an end the second round of oral argument of Guyana as well as this afternoon's sitting. The Court will Meet again Monday, 11th May 2026 at 3pm to hear the second round of oral argument of Venezuela. The sitting is close.