This week I am concluding the discussion started a few weeks ago on the maritime boundary dispute, which has dramatically surfaced between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago and now involves Guyana, in the light of its implications for the further advancement of the CARICOM integration movement. Because this dispute flared up during the Carnival season, some regional commentators have portrayed the sabre-rattling and heated exchanges between the respective governments as little more than Carnival picong, which is much ado about nothing. This, I believe, is a grave misjudgment, if only because the arbitration process that has been set in train can now only lead to a final and irrevocable outcome, based entirely on legal considerations.
In the international community, boundary agreements (and for this purpose we could include maritime boundary agreements) are expected to be binding on all parties. As Trinidad and Tobago's Foreign Minister has indicated: "They have a vocation for permanence and stability." The quotation which he has cited is from the Handbook on the Delimitation of Maritime Boundaries published by the United Nations, which is the agency where the present dispute is being legally determined. This "vocation for permanence and stability" is what one would reasonably expect, since a world in which boundary agreements are casually or otherwise changed would be one of unimaginable instability.
As we earlier noted, it is the living and non-living resources within the maritime zones of the countries in dispute that are the real issue at stake in the present dispute. Definite, clear, certain, and predictable boundaries are an essential prerequisite for investments to flow to develop such resources.
We have our own direct experience of this reality in Guyana, both with earlier proposed investments in Essequibo (to which Venezuela objected, hydro- electricity) and more recently the CGX oil-exploration to our north-east, which Suriname forcibly brought to a halt.
In the earlier discussion I had also noted that the concept of the Caribbean Sea as a common resource for the region as a whole, advanced by Barbados, was outright rejected by Trinidad and Tobago, on the grounds that the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which brought CARICOM into existence, makes for no such provision. In the absence of this, national and international law must prevail. The basis of the dispute lies in the Delimitation Treaty signed between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago in 1990. It is noteworthy that 14 years had elapsed since the signing of the Treaty before it became the subject of fierce regional controversy.
Trinidad and Tobago has tried to make much out of this "delayed reaction." It will, however, no doubt be argued that a delay in seeking to enforce one's rights does not constitute a revocation of those rights, unless some form of statute of limitation is in force, as such a statute is the only known means of legally setting a time limit on making a legal claim.
Quiet diplomacy
The claim made by Barbados in the dispute has stipulated that the Venezuela- Trinidad and Tobago Delimitation Treaty captured a sizeable portion of Guyana's landmass. This direct involvement of Guyana in the dispute had seemed, at the time, somewhat surprising. How-ever, in light of the recent Guyana-Barbados Exclusive Economic Zone Cooperation Treaty, it is now clear that much more was taking place between Barbados and Guyana through 'quiet diplomacy.' As it has turned out, the two governments had signed this treaty last December after negotiations spanning a period of about two years. The treaty itself lays the basis for an eventual agreement over the living and non-living resources of the exclusive maritime zones of the two countries. The treaty has created a joint Cooperation Zone, in which the two states could jointly exercise all the functions of a state, namely, control, management, development, exploration, and exploitation of living and non-living natural resources, alongside other rights and duties as specified in the treaty.
As it stands, the treaty does not constitute a delimitation of the maritime zones of Barbados and Guyana, as some persons believe. Indeed, Article 1 paragraph 2 of the treaty explicitly states: "This Treaty and the Cooperation Zone established thereunder are without prejudice to the eventual delimitation of the Parties' respective maritime zones in accordance with generally accepted principles of international law and the Convention;" that is, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). There is a provision, however, that the parties may, by agreement, at a later date, "delimit an international maritime boundary between them" (Article 2). The treaty remains in force until such an international maritime boundary delimitation agreement is concluded between the two states.
Military pact!
Some persons have interpreted the treaty to be a joint military pact directed against Trinidad and Tobago. There is no evidence of this whatsoever in the present treaty. Article 7 covers jurisdiction over security matters, but these seem more of a policing-type aimed at protecting the cooperation zone than a military defence pact. Thus the areas of security listed in Article 7 refer to: enforcement of regulations over natural resources; terrorism; prevention of illicit narcotics trafficking; trafficking in firearms, ammunitions, explosives and other related materials; smuggling; piracy; trafficking in persons; and maritime policing and search and rescue. The final paragraph (7.3) at the end of this article does indicate a possible security agreement to come, which may take on more of the character of a defence pact. It states: "until a security agreement as contemplated in Article 7 (2) is in force... each Party shall unilaterally exercise defence and criminal jurisdiction within and in relation to the Cooperation Zone."
From any vantage point these are serious, long-term, fundamental arrangements, which CARICOM has now to accommodate. Their complexity, along with the seemingly sudden eruption of conflict over them between member states, does not bode well for the future. Indeed, while some may wish to pretend that all this is not happening, and dismiss its relevance to the future of CARICOM, in my judgment they constitute potentially disruptive considerations, which will haunt the region for a considerable time to come.
Patriotism and scoundrels
Columnists in the regional press have attempted to explain the maritime boundary dispute as external diversions from domestic difficulties deliberately being promoted by the governments of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. In the case of Barbados it is claimed that it is the economic difficulties that the country presently faces, from which the Prime Minister is seeking to deflect attention. Indeed, the Trinidad and Tobago government has publicly hinted as much! In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, it is claimed that the Manning administration was facing at the time the problem created when one of his ministers quit in protest over the denial of wage payments to workers who are his constituents in Point Fortin, stressing that his representational role as a member of parliament has to take precedence over his collective responsibility, as a minister of government. While political scoundrels have in the past resorted to this tactic of an external diversion, in my view such an explanation does not warrant serious attention, because the domestic 'threats,' while important, are in neither instance as serious as they have been portrayed.