2023-12-04 04:45:18
According to the authoritarian government, the people of Venezuela confirmed their country’s claim to the resource-rich Essequibo region in the neighboring state of Guyana in a referendum. On Sunday, almost 96 percent of participants answered yes to the question of whether a new Venezuelan federal state called Guayana Esequiba should be created and the population there should receive Venezuelan citizenship, as the electoral authority CNE announced in the evening (local time).
Voter turnout was therefore around 51 percent. President Nicolás Maduro celebrated the result as a victory for Venezuela in front of hundreds of supporters in Plaza Bolívar in the capital Caracas. It was initially unclear how the government wanted to proceed.
The United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday ordered Venezuela to “refrain from any action that would alter the current situation in the disputed territory.” Guyana’s government had described the referendum as a threat to its security and peace. The approximately 160,000 square kilometer Essequibo area makes up regarding two thirds of Guyana’s territory.
According to official information, all five questions in the referendum were answered yes with a majority of between 95.4 and 98.11 percent of the votes. Among them was the question of whether Venezuela should reject the ICJ’s jurisdiction in the matter.
The current boundaries of the area were established in 1899 by an arbitration award from a tribunal in Paris, initiated by the USA and Great Britain. Venezuela relies on an agreement with the United Kingdom from 1966 – a few months before the then colony of British Guiana became independent. This provided for a negotiated solution to the dispute. The border conflict worsened when large reserves of oil were found off Essequibo’s Atlantic coast in 2015. Guyana, one of the poorest countries in South America, granted production licenses to the US oil company Exxon Mobil.
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