Last Updated on Monday, 4 May 2026, 12:22 by Denis Chabrol
Guyana on Monday broke a part Venezuela’s decades-long reliance on a memorandum by the then Secretary to the 1899 Arbitration Tribunal, lawyer Severo Mallet-Prevost that the land boundary award was the result of collusion between Russia and the United Kingdom and pressure by that tribunal’s president, Friedrich Martens.
Through one of its lawyers, Edward Craven, Guyana is also asking the ICJ to punish Venezuela for violating its order by going ahead with a referendum in December 2023 that essentially amended the constitution to include Essequibo as part of its map, registration of Guyanese in Essequibo to elect representatives in Venezuela and its establishment as a defence zone. Saying that the ICJ orders were plainly violated, he asked the ICJ to declare that Venezuela has violated the two provisional measures orders which the Court has made. Consequently, he said the court should order Venezuela to revoke, by means of its own choosing, each and every law, decree and other domestic Act which has been enacted or taken in violation of those provisional measures, orders, including the legislation which purports to incorporate Guyana’s sovereign territory within Venezuela, and the legislation which purports to extend Venezuela’s legislative, executive and judicial jurisdiction to that territory.
Guyana is also asking the court to order that Venezuela must withdraw and destroy the official maps that purport to depict Guyana Esequiba as part of Venezuela. “These measures are requested because Venezuela is under the obligation, by way of reparation for its breaches of the provisional measures to re establish the situation which would in all probability have existed if those breaches had not been committed,” he said.
British Law Professor, Philippe Sands, representing Guyana at the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) hearings on the merits of the case on the validity of the boundary award, called the purported 1944 Mallet-Prevost memorandum a “mishmash of unreliable anecdotes” that lacked any substance. In keeping with his request, the memo was released after his death in 1948. Then American jurist, Otto Schoenrich handed the Venezuelan government the memo one year later, forming the basis for Caracas to reopen the boundary dispute. “In the years since 1962 Venezuela has used it repeatedly to generate heat and smoke, but no light and no illumination,” Mr Sands told the court in The Hague, Brussels.
“While the allegation of a secret Anglo Russian deal is outlandish, it is also instructive for it starkly demonstrates the unreliability of the claims made in the memorandum, which by way of speculation and nothing by way of substance. It’s long on fantasy and short on facts, it lay dormant for 13 years after its publication,” the lawyer added.
Mr Sands said there was no reliable evidence that those conversations occurred and they provide no no support whatsoever for any contention that the 1899 Award was a “nullity” and claims about Mallet-Prevost conversations are “mystically untrue or wholly uncorroborated.” “In a nutshell, this document, this supposed document, is a giant red herring. It does not support Venezuela’s attack on the validity of the 1899 award. Its only real value, we say, is to confirm that that attack is entirely devoid of any substance whatsoever,” he said.
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