‘Not a shred of evidence’ – Philippe Sands dismisses Venezuela’s ICJ claims

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague heard a robust defence of Guyana’s territorial integrity on Friday from its lead counsel, Professor Philippe Sands KC.

Sands, a prominent British-French international lawyer, argued that Venezuela’s challenge to the 1899 Arbitral Award is rooted not in new evidence, but in a political attempt to reopen a matter settled for more than a century.

Appearing before the World Court at The Hague on behalf of Guyana, Sands shredded Venezuela’s reliance on the 1949 Mallet-Prevost memorandum, which Caracas has long used to claim the Arbitral Award was invalid.

The lawyer argued that the memorandum “changed nothing” since Venezuela was already aware, from the moment the award was issued in 1899, that the decision involved compromise among arbitrators. “The argument is tosh. It’s a fiction,” Sands told the court, insisting that Venezuela’s claim that it only became aware of alleged defects in 1949 was factually inaccurate.

He pointed to newspaper reports published within days of the 1899 ruling, including articles in The New York Times and The Times of London, which openly discussed the nature of the award and the negotiations among arbitrators.

According to Sands, Venezuela accepted the ruling for 63 years, negotiated and signed the 1905 treaty implementing the boundary, and faithfully adhered to it for decades before abruptly changing its position in 1962. “There is not a shred of evidence” that the tribunal’s president engaged in extortion or coercion, Sands argued, rejecting Venezuela’s claims that the award was the product of political blackmail.

Furthermore, he explained that efforts by arbitrators to secure consensus are a normal feature of international arbitration and should not be interpreted as wrongdoing. “The striving for consensus is an act of decency and wisdom,” he stated.

Sands further contended that Venezuela’s attempt to frame the dispute as a legacy of colonial injustice was misplaced and dangerous. Referencing the ICJ’s Chagos advisory opinion, Venezuela had argued that the court should view the 1899 award through an anti-colonial lens.

However, Sands said the Chagos matter was entirely different from Guyana’s case. “Chagos offers no assistance whatsoever to Venezuela. It is totally different,” he stressed.

The senior counsel warned that overturning an arbitral award and a treaty more than a century old would create serious global consequences, threatening the stability of international borders established after independence across Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. “You would rekindle the embers of dead empires,” Sands cautioned the judges.

“You would plunge Guyana into a new form of domination and oppression in relations with its much larger neighbour.” To this end, he also warned that accepting Venezuela’s arguments would signal that decades-old border settlements could suddenly be challenged, creating instability worldwide. “It would threaten to open the gates of challenge to any and every colonial era arbitration award or boundary settlement,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sands defended Guyana’s territorial identity, noting that the country emerged into independence with internationally recognised borders and has since faced what he described as an “existential threat of dismemberment.”

He ended his presentation with a symbolic reference to the renowned Guyanese-British artist Sir Frank Bowling and one of his paintings depicting South America and Africa. Sands noted that when Bowling was born in Bartica in 1934, Venezuela accepted that the town was part of Guyana. “But today it does not,” he observed, “The painting is a whole, and a whole, we trust it must remain.”

Meanwhile, following Sands’ presentation, Professor Nilufer Oral reinforced Guyana’s position, arguing that Venezuela had long accepted the validity of the 1899 Award through its own conduct and implementation of the boundary for more than half a century.

Professor Oral told the court that Venezuela was aware of every alleged defect in the award from the very beginning and had “lost the right” to challenge it after decades of acceptance and acquiescence.