The hearings, scheduled to run from May 4-11 at the Peace Palace in The Hague, mark the most consequential phase yet in a case Guyana filed in March 2018 seeking a final, binding ruling that the Arbitral Award of 1899, which established the boundary between what was then the colony of British Guiana and Venezuela, remains valid under international law. Guyana opened proceedings with its first round of oral arguments. Venezuela is expected to present its arguments next week.

The dispute dates to the second half of the nineteenth century, when the United Kingdom and Venezuela both claimed the territory between the Essequibo and Orinoco rivers. An international tribunal of British, American and Russian arbitrators unanimously awarded the territory to British Guiana in 1899, and a subsequent 1905 boundary agreement adhered to that decision. Venezuela accepted the boundary for more than 60 years before reversing its position on the eve of Guyana’s independence in 1966, arguing that the award was a product of collusion between British and Russian arbitrators.

The ICJ already ruled twice that it has jurisdiction to hear the case. In December 2020, the court affirmed its jurisdiction, and in April 2023 it rejected Venezuela’s preliminary objectionto admissibility, clearing the path to the current merits phase. The court also issued provisional measures ordering Venezuela to refrain from any action that would alter Guyana’s administration and control of the disputed territory. In May 2025, the court strengthened those measures by ordering Venezuela not to conduct or prepare elections in the region.

Venezuela has repeatedly defied the court’s authority. In December 2023, the Venezuelan government held a consultative referendum in which voters endorsed the creation of a “Guayana Esequiba” state. In April 2024, President Nicolas Maduro promulgated an “Organic Law in Defense of Guayana Esequiba,” purporting to formally incorporate the Essequibo into Venezuelan territory, create administrative units for oil and mineral exploitation there, and establish legislative and executive offices. Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who assumed the role after the US military operation that led to Maduro’s capture earlier this year, stated in August 2025 that Venezuela would ignore the ICJ’s final ruling.

Tensions mounted in the weeks leading up to the hearings. Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali wrote to Caribbean Community (CARICOM) chairman Terrance Drew protesting a brooch worn by Rodriguez during visits to Grenada and Barbados that depicted a map of Venezuela including Essequibo, calling it a “calculated and provocative assertion” of Venezuela’s territorial claim. CARICOM cautioned member states against using diplomatic engagements within the Community to legitimize claims currently before the court.

Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country approaches the hearings with full confidence in the strength of its case. The government has received support from CARICOM, the Commonwealth, the European Union, and the Organization of American States. Guyana currently produces approximately 750,000 barrels of oil per day, largely from reserves in and around the Essequibo region, making the court’s eventual ruling one of the highest-stakes territorial decisions in recent ICJ history.

From JURIST, May 4. Used with permission.

See also our podcast “Geopolitics of the Essequibo dispute”

Map: Google

Backed by Interpol, the European Union through EL PACCTO 2.0, and a Dutch police unit specializing in environmental crime, “Operation Guyana Shield” involved over 24,500 checks on people and vehicles across remote border areas, and resulted in 198 arrests. Officers seized large quantities of cash, unprocessed gold, and mercury, as well as firearms, drugs and mining equipment. Authorities said organized crime networks behind these operations are linked to a major Guyanese gold exporting firm. The operation signals a new enforcement posture, marked by deeper cross-border collaboration to disrupt transnational networks that evade jurisdictional boundaries and exploit enforcement gaps across the Amazon border region.

“The surge in international gold prices in recent years has resulted in increased gold mining, making it the fastest-growing revenue stream for organized crime groups,” Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said. Commenting on the collaborative nature of the operation, he continued: “At Interpol, we are committed to working with our partners to disrupt those networks and prevent more damage to this remote and environmentally fragile region.”

Authorities also seized over $60,000 worth of cylinders of mercury, which is commonly used in illegal gold mining to separate gold ore. It is extremely toxic and harmful to both the environment and human health, and can have devastating consequences for both when improperly transported and stored. Officers working on the border between Brazil and Guyana also intercepted a bus carrying undocumented migrants, including minors, who they believe to have been exploited for child labor or sexual abuse.

The Operation Guyana Shield task force was based out of Brazil’s International Police Cooperation Center (CCPI) for Amazonia in Manaus, and was comprised of officials from all four participating jurisdictions. The operation represented a single, coordinated push to disrupt organized crime networks in the Guyana Shield region, which is routinely plagued by illegal gold mining, cross-border smuggling, and related crimes that exploit remote borders and weak or uneven enforcement capacities.

With enforcement actions increasingly shaped by shared intelligence and coordinated deployments, officials framed Operation Guyana Shield as a test case for sustained regional cooperation against organized crime.

From JURIST, Jan. 23. Used with permission.

Photo: IBAMA via Flickr

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly podcast via Patreon—or $2 for our special offer, or $5 to become a Major Rant Enabler. We now have 61 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 62!

Map: SurinameCentral via Wikimedia Commons

The incident took place Oct. 21, when two men entered Santa Maria in Traspontina Church near St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, removed several of the Pachamama statues that had been on display there, and then threw them into the Tiber. The statues were subsequently recovered, and four days later Pope Francis issued an apology for the act, speaking in his capacity as Bishop of Rome. “As bishop of this diocese,” he wrote, “I ask forgiveness from those who have been offended by this gesture.”

The statues, identical carved wooden images of a naked pregnant indigenous Amazonian woman, had been used in several events and rituals during the Oct. 6-27 Amazon Synod, which brought together 185 bishops from across the Amazon Basin. In his statement, the Pope referred to the statues as representing Pachamama, the Earth Mother deity of many traditional peoples in South America. They had also been described during the Synod as representing “Our Lady of the Amazon,” suggesting an identification with the Virgin Mary. (Catholic News Agency, Oct. 25; National Catholic Reporter, Oct. 21)

Brandmüller was one of the four cardinals who in 2016 sent a letter to Pope Francis raising questions (or dubia, Latin for “doubts”) about his Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love) document, which broached allowing divorced and remarried believers to receive communion. Earlier this year, Brandmüller joined with the other surviving “dubia cardinal,” Raymond Leo Burke of Missouri, to issue a letter asserting that the “horrible crime” of clerical sexual abuse of minors is part of the “plague of the homosexual agenda” that has “been spread within the Church…promoted by organized networks and protected by a…conspiracy of silence.” (Catholic News Agency, Feb. 20; National Catholic Register, Nov. 14, 2016)

The Amazon Synod—officially the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region—clearly represented an opposite current in the Church. Indigenous leaders from throughout the Amazon joined the bishops from Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname. Although only the bishops had voting power, the indigenous leaders—some in face paint and traditional headdresses—presided at rituals and consultations attended by the prelates. The Synod’s final document called for allowing married deacons to become priests, and said that the idea of ordaining women as deacons had been “very present” during their discussions

The document also invoked an “indigenous theology” and the need for an “Amazonian rite” in the Church. It set forth a proposed definition of “ecological sin,” as “an action or omission against God, against others, the community and the environment… It is a sin against future generations and manifests itself in acts and habits of pollution and destruction of the environmental harmony, transgressions against the principles of interdependence and the breaking of solidarity networks among creatures and against the virtue of justice.” It called for grappling with “the political and ethical dimension of our word of faith” in the face of the “prevailing destructive and extractive development model.”

“We denounce the violation of human rights and extractivist destruction,” the document stated. Making explicit reference to the threat of climate change, it called for a “a radical energy transition and the search for alternatives.”  (National Catholic Reporter EarthBeat, NPR, Oct. 26; Vatican News, Oct. 24)

Photo: National Catholic Reporter

“We have initiated an investigation,” Saab said in a televised press conference, of Guaidó’s involvement “in an illegal negotiation behind the country’s back that intends to withdraw the historical claim our country has on the territory of Esequibo.” He added: “The facts imply a crime of treason.”

A BBC Mundo account from last year details the long dormant but recently enflamed territorial dispute. The Esequibo region (also rendered Essequibo or Guayana Esequiba) covers 159,000 square kilometers—nearly two-thirds of Guyana’s national territory. In colonial times, the Spanish, Dutch and British all made claims to the territory, and the Spanish claims were inherited by Venezuela after it won independence. In 1897, Venezuela and Britain agreed to international arbitration. Two years later, a Russian judge in a Paris court awarded the territory to the British Empire. But in 1962, Venezuela revived its claim in the United Nations, asserting that there was collusion between the judge and Britain in the 1899 ruling. After Guyana won independence from Britain in 1966, it entered into the Geneva Agreement with Venezuela, in which both sides agreed the territory would be administered by Guyana until the dispute was resolved. However, a four-year timetable for resolution was not adhered to, and the issue languished. The conflict was only revived in 2015, when ExxonMobil announced discovery of a big offshore deposit in waters along the Esequibo coast.

This came just as Venezuela was sliding into crisis—Esequibo was for President Nicolás Maduro both a potential goad of more oil to exploit, if he could actually get it, and (probably more importantly) a nationalist rallying cry amid the crisis of his regime. Under petition by Venezuela, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last year referred the dispute to the International Court of Justice. (AFP, Jan. 31, 2018)

Ironically, from the perspective of current politics, the Esequibo dispute was also at issue in 1964, when a US-aligned Venezuela helpfully offered to intervene in Guyana (then still British Guiana, with only limited self-rule) to remove the left-populist government of Cheddi Jagan—then target of a joint CIA-British destabilization effort. This intrigue, revealed in US State Department documents obtained by Guyana’s Stabroek News in 2015, involved a plot to put Jagan’s rival Forbes Burnham in power, with Venezuela grabbing a chunk of the Esequibo in return for its efforts. This was a special fixation of Venezuela’s then-president, Raúl Leoni, who in 1968 issued the so-called Leoni Decree, claiming a nine-mile wide strip of Guyana’s waters off the Esequibo coast. (Jagan was in fact forced to resign in favor of Burnham by CIA-British intrigues in 1964, although it never came to Venezuelan intervention.)

Meanwhile, a grimly amusing development in the interminable Venezuela mess is that both sides are now animatedly accusing the other of collaboration with Colombian narco gangs. Maduro’s supporters are making much of a photo that has emerged of Guaidó posing alongside two men identified as “El Brother” and “El Menor,” supposed leaders of the Rastrojos criminal gang and paramilitary network. The photos appear to have been taken at a February outdoor benefit concert to raise money for (opposition-controlled) “aid” for Venezuela in the Colombian city of Cúcuta, near the border. “I took hundreds of photos that day,” Guaidó protested to Colombia’s Blu Radio. “It was hard to know who was asking for a photo. Misconstruing these photos means playing the Maduro regime’s game.” But Venezuela’s Fiscalía says it is opening an investigation into Guaidó’s possible involvement with Colombian paramilitaries. (The Guardian) To which we say—better that than ceding the Esequibo claim, thank you!

The Wall Street Journal meanwhile claims to have seen documents filed by US federal prosecutors seeking the extradition of Hugo Carvajal, Venezuela’s ex-intelligence chief, from Spain, on cocaine trafficking charges. The documents reportedly allege a conspiracy by the government of Hugo Chávez and Colombia’s FARC guerillas, discussed at a 2005 meeting in Caracas. “During the meeting, Chávez urged the group, in substance and in part, to promote his policy objectives, including to combat the United States by ‘flooding’ the country with cocaine,” according to an affidavit by DEA agent among the documents.

Maduro has recently revived centuries-old territorial claims to Colombia in his rivalry with his neighbor to the west. There is more than a whiff of desperation to all this.

Just before the Leticia summit opened, a group of international attorneys specializing in human rights and environmental law announced that they will file a complaint against Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity and the environment at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. The attorneys, including the former French ambassador for human rights François Zimeray, will seek to have Bolsonaro indicted for his failure to respond to the Amazon fires in a timely manner.

It was only under mounting international pressure that Bolsonaro announced that he would mobilize the army to fight the flames late last month. Brazil is named by human rights groups as the deadliest country in the world for land defenders, with at least 57 murdered last year, 25 of them in three massacres. Some legal scholars maintain that the fires themselves constitute a form of genocide against the Amazon’s indigenous peoples. (Colombia Reports, AFP, The Rio Times, EuroNews, Gizmodo, CNN)

Photo via Mongabay

This was a reference to Venezuela’s southeastern Guayana region, which borders Colombia’s eastern plains and through which Simón Bolívar liberated much of what is now Colombia (then New Grenada) from Spanish rule in 1819. Bolívar subsequently ruled over both the contemporary nations (as well as Ecuador and Panama) under the Republic of Gran Colombia until his death 1830, when the federation collapsed. Maduro made his comments while on a visit to the Venezuelan state of Bolívar, which covers much of Guayana region.

Colombia’s Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin dismissed Maduro’s remarks, telling reporters: “I believe we have really big problems, a very complex situation [that is] difficult for Venezuelans.” Colombia and Venezuela have for years gone through a cycle of diplomatic tension followed by reconciliation. (Colombia Reports, July 8; RT, July 7; RCN Radio, El Espectador, Bogotá, RPP, Lima, July 6)

"We feel that when the high court tells us that we have no rights to decide and control what takes place on our land, then the land is not ours," said the Isseneru statement on the ruling. "Just Friday [Jan. 11], when inquiring at the office of the GGMC [Guyana Geology and Mines Commission], we learnt that our whole land is covered with mining concessions. Yet, the government has not informed us about this." 

Isseneru village received communal title to its lands in 1997, under the 1951 Amerindian Act. But the law leaves some ambiguity about the status of pre-exisiting mineral clams on lands titled to indigenous communities.

On Jan. 25, some 80 indigenous people protested the ruling outside the office of the president. "If this ruling goes forward then it will be a huge step backwards and will threaten indigenous peoples' rights to land and to self-determination throughout the country," said Jean La Rose of Guyana's Amerindian Peoples Association (APA). (Mongabay, Jan. 29; Forest Peoples Program, Jan. 28; Demerara Waves, Guyana, Jan. 22; Kaieteur News, Jan. 21)