Venezuela confirmed on Friday the holding of a referendum on Sunday on an annexation of Essequibo, an oil-rich region under the administration of Guyana, despite the order given by the highest court of the UN to refrain from any modification of the status quo.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), which sits in The Hague, ordered Caracas on Friday to “refrain from taking any action which would modify the situation prevailing in the disputed territory”, without however mentioning the Venezuelan consultation on Sunday .
“Nothing in international law allows the Court to interfere in the internal affairs of Venezuela or to claim to prohibit or modify a sovereign act,” said the Vice-President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, reading an official document during of a press conference.
“Venezuela, as he announced […]will continue all preparations with a view to holding the consultative referendum,” continued Ms. Rodriguez, who was accompanied by the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs, Vladimir Padrino Lopez and Yvan Gil.
Caracas has claimed for decades the Essequibo, a region of 160,000 km2 representing more than two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and home to approximately one-fifth of its population, or some 125,000 people.
The December 3 referendum is supposed to be about the rejection of a court decision dating back to 1899 which fixes the country’s border with Guyana, a former colony of Great Britain and the Netherlands.
In hearings earlier this month before the ICJ, Guyana said the consultation posed an “existential threat”.
The country asked the court to force Venezuela to “urgently” stop the referendum “in its current form” and to refrain from any action aimed at taking control of the territory.
But Caracas invokes an agreement signed in Geneva in 1966 with the United Kingdom, before Guyana’s independence, annulling the 1899 court decision and laying the foundations for a negotiated settlement.
Venezuela’s claim has become even hotter since the discovery of oil in the Essequibo by ExxonMobil in 2015.