Guiana Esequiba

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Guayana Esequiba ( Spanish pronunciation: [ ɡwaˈʝana eseˈkiβa ]), also known as Territorio del Esequibo , is the name of an area west of the Essequibo River that has belonged to Guyanese territory since an arbitration award in 1899 , but is claimed by Venezuela refers to the Treaty of Geneva of February 17, 1966. The area is 159,542 km² and thus comprises 62% of the Guyanese national territory. In 2010, 283,000 people lived there. This corresponds to a population density of 1.77 inhabitants per km². This means that Guiana Esequiba is extremely sparsely populated (for comparison: Guyana 3.5 inh / km², Venezuela 32 inh / km²).

Guiana Esequiba - the rest of Guyana in pink

The only area of ​​Guiana Esequiba that is under Venezuelan control is the Isla de Anacoco in the Cuyuní River , but this is still claimed by Guyana, which sees it as an illegal territorial occupation by Venezuela. According to the Venezuelan view, the entire river island is outside the disputed area.

history

Christopher Columbus , who is in Spanish service, was the first European to travel to Guiana Esequiba on his third trip to America. In 1777, Charles III created the governorship of Venezuela by decree and declared the Essequibo as a natural border to the Dutch colony in Guyana, although the Dutch colonies Berbice , Essequibo and Demerara were also partly west of the Essequibo. With the British-Dutch Treaty of 1814 , part of the Dutch colonies were transferred to Great Britain, including the areas east of the Essequibo. In 1831 Great Britain merged Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo to form British Guiana , with the Essequibo as the western border, although many British settlers lived west of the Essequibo.

In 1840 the British government commissioned the German botanist Robert Hermann Schomburgk to determine the borders between British Guiana and Venezuela . He was busy with this task for several years. The border line established by him (the so-called Schomburgk Line) stretched over the mouth of the Orinoco , and thus into (today's) Venezuelan territory. Venezuela did not recognize this demarcation.

The 1899 award

After years of dispute, Venezuela and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland agreed in 1897 to submit to an arbitration award from an international legal commission. This arbitration award, which was made on October 3, 1899, was largely in favor of the United Kingdom.

Revival of the conflict

In 1963, when it was foreseeable that the British colony of Guyana would soon become independent, voices were raised in Venezuela calling for the region to be returned to Venezuelan sovereignty. These urged the Venezuelan government to act before British Guiana became independent .

The Venezuelan government then declared the arbitration null and void in 1899 on the grounds that there had been procedural errors. On the eve of Guyana’s independence in 1966, on February 17, the United Kingdom and Venezuela signed the Geneva Accord, which provided for an arbitration commission. But after four years of dispute with no results, the commission was dissolved. In the same year, the conflict with the Venezuelan occupation of the Isla de Anacoco, which was divided after the demarcation of 1899, intensified .

Venezuelan map with Guiana Esequiba

It was therefore decided to freeze all claims for twelve years. In 1982, at the end of this period, Venezuela decided to renew its claims and brought the matter to the UN , and in 2006 it was brought to the United Nations Secretariat-General . In November 2007 there was an incident in the disputed border area.

The conflict flared up again in the spring of 2015 after the new Guyanese government granted the US oil multinational ExxonMobil concessions for the exploration of oil deposits in the Esequibo marine area . The then Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had assured the government of Guyana in 2004 that his country would not oppose the granting of concessions in the Essequibo area.

literature

  • Jan Gillis Wetter: The international arbitral process. Public and private . Oceana, Dobbs Ferry 1979 (5 volumes).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Office for Statistics ( Memento of September 2, 2012 on WebCite ) (PDF; 161 kB) from Guyana. Accessed May 4, 2012
  2. ↑ http://www.guyana.org/features/postindependence/chapter8.html
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ The treaty of arbitration between Venezuela and Great Britain, signed at Washington and dated the second day of February, 1897 , there in particular Art. 13 (English), accessed on December 27, 2014.
  5. ↑ Text of the decision agreed upon unanimously in Paris by the Arbitral Tribunal deciding upon the boundary between Venezuela and British Guiana , there No. 988, accessed on December 27, 2014.
  6. ↑ Geneva Agreement (PDF; 76 kB). Accessed May 4, 2012.
  7. ^ Cronología del Proceso de la Reclamación ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (Spanish), accessed on December 27, 2014.
  8. ↑ Venezuela and Guyana to Improve Alerts After Border Incursion , accessed December 27, 2014.
  9. ↑ Venezuela laments Exxon's role in dispute with Guyana , amerika21, accessed July 29, 2015.
  10. ↑ Tjerk Brühwiller: Guyana has to fight for two thirds of its territory . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, September 10, 2015, p. 5.

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