The event date was January 9, 2025, when Guyana said it would seek help from the United Nations’ top court to deter Venezuela from moving ahead with plans to elect a governor for the Essequibo region.
Essequibo is the west of Guyana and covers roughly two-thirds of the country’s land mass, but Venezuela has long claimed it as its own. The source packet says Guyana’s foreign ministry argued that any Venezuelan attempt to conduct an election there would violate the December 2022 agreement in which the two countries pledged not to trigger conflict or escalate tensions over the mineral- and oil-rich territory. Guyana described the territory’s residents as Guyanese nationals living in sovereign Guyanese land, and said any election there would be a flagrant breach of international law.
The government said it would ask the International Court of Justice in The Hague for provisional measures if Venezuela went ahead. In practical terms, that would be an attempt to freeze Venezuelan action before it could be turned into a new political fact on the ground. The packet also notes that Guyana went to the world court in 2018 asking judges to uphold the 1899 border decision, while Venezuela argues a 1966 agreement superseded that ruling. A decision is not expected this year because Venezuela was given until late August to respond.
The dispute has grown more combustible because of oil. Massive quantities of oil and gas were discovered off Guyana’s coast in 2015, and the country’s production was already running at about 650,000 barrels a day in the source packet. That wealth has made Essequibo more valuable in strategic terms and has sharpened the political stakes for both governments. Guyana had also objected only weeks earlier to a Venezuelan military-built bridge near Ankoko Island, calling it a breach of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The wider backdrop includes outside involvement. Tensions between the two countries had eased for much of the previous year after Guyana allowed U.S. military fighter jets to fly over Georgetown in a show of support in May. The source packet does not suggest war was imminent, but it does show a dispute that has moved from historical grievance to live diplomatic escalation.
Guyana’s move to the world court was therefore both legal and strategic: legal, because it asked judges to intervene before a Venezuelan election could proceed; strategic, because it aimed to show that the country would resist any effort to redraw facts on the ground in a territory that has become more important with each barrel of oil.
