Christie Justus Law — Research Papers · CJL-WP 2026/05
Naomi Eglantine Christie · LL.B. (Distinction) · L.E.C. (Honours) · LL.M., New York University, 2015 — International Legal Studies · Attorney-at-Law, admitted to the Bar of Guyana, October 2013, and to the Bar of Grenada, 2014.
September 2026 · 28 pages · 130 footnotes · PDF
The case concerning the Arbitral Award of 3 October 1899 (Guyana v Venezuela) is under deliberation at the International Court of Justice. The public hearings on the merits closed on 11 May 2026; as at 4 September 2026 no judgment has been delivered and no date of delivery has been announced. This paper does not predict the outcome. It asks a prior question: what kind of instrument is the Geneva Agreement of 17 February 1966, and what does its operation between 1966 and 2018 show about how a small state uses international law? I argue that the Geneva Agreement is not a settlement but an agreement about the means of settlement, that it contains a binding delegation to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and that its long operation is the clearest modern record of a state without leverage choosing the tribunal, because the tribunal is the one room in which it and its neighbour are the same size. I read the proceedings so far as three tests of that choice: consent (the Judgment of 18 December 2020), the absent third party (the Judgment of 6 April 2023), and the peacetime shield of provisional measures (the Orders of 1 December 2023 and 1 May 2025). The questions the merits raise are then stated and left unanswered: finality under Article XIII of the 1897 Treaty, the recognised grounds of nullity, the 1905 demarcation and six decades of conduct, the effect of the Geneva Agreement itself, and the exclusion of post-1966 events. The method is documentary. Nothing here rests on anything but the Court's own texts, the parties' pleadings and verbatim records, and the instruments themselves, and where the parties disagree both positions are given in their own words.
Keywords: Guyana; Venezuela; International Court of Justice; Geneva Agreement 1966; Arbitral Award of 1899; nullity of arbitral awards; consent to jurisdiction; Monetary Gold; provisional measures; small states
Naomi Eglantine Christie · LL.B. (Distinction) · L.E.C. (Honours) · LL.M., New York University, 2015 — International Legal Studies · Attorney-at-Law, admitted to the Bar of Guyana, October 2013, and to the Bar of Grenada, 2014. The author is Guyanese and writes from Berbice; the reader is asked to hold her to the authorities cited and not to her nationality. Correspondence: naomi@christiejustuslaw.com.
© 2026 Naomi Eglantine Christie. This paper may be downloaded, printed and circulated without charge for personal, academic and teaching use, with attribution. It states the law as the author understands it at the date on the cover; it is not legal advice to any person. Pending matters are described as pending.