Belize border dispute case with Guatemala and Honduras to begin in February next year

Be­lize’s Prime Min­is­ter John Briceño says the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) will re­ceive oral pre­sen­ta­tions in the case be­tween Guatemala and Be­lize from Feb­ru­ary 22 -26 next year.

Briceño in a na­tion­wide ra­dio and tele­vi­sion broad­cast, said that he has been in­formed by the reg­is­trar of the ICJ that oral pre­sen­ta­tions in the Be­lize, Hon­duras case will be heard from March 5, 2027 re­gard­ing the sov­er­eign­ty over the Sapodil­la Cayes and that these hear­ings will take place at The Hague.

“For too long our bor­ders have been dis­put­ed by our neigh­bors. In keep­ing with our com­mit­ment to the peace­ful set­tle­ment of dis­putes and re­spect for the rule of law, we have had re­course to the court.

“We are con­fi­dent that all doubts will be re­moved by these two court cas­es. Be­lize will be vin­di­cat­ed. Be­lize has en­gaged a stel­lar team of in­ter­na­tion­al lawyers and ex­perts to ad­vise us and to present our case be­fore the court,” Briceño said.

Be­lize and Guatemala have a long-stand­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute with Guatemala claim­ing more than 11,000 square kilo­me­ters of Be­lizean land, is­lands and mar­itime ar­eas. The dis­pute is be­fore the ICJ.

In March 2000, Be­lize and Guatemala re­sumed dis­cus­sions on their ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute with the as­sis­tance of the OAS and on No­vem­ber 8, 2000, they signed the first Agree­ment on Con­fi­dence Build­ing Mea­sures, es­tab­lish­ing an “Ad­ja­cen­cy Line” and a one-kilo­me­ter “Ad­ja­cen­cy Zone” on ei­ther side.

A sec­ond Agree­ment was signed on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2003, and sub­se­quent­ly amend­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2005 by the “Agree­ment on a Frame­work for Ne­go­ti­a­tion and Con­fi­dence Build­ing Mea­sures be­tween Be­lize and Guatemala.

Prime Min­is­ter John Briceño said that the Be­lizean team prepar­ing its case has worked dili­gent­ly with sev­er­al stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing Am­bas­sadors As­sad Shoman and Alex­is Rosa­do, the coun­try’s co-agents be­fore the ICJ, as well as with for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ters Ea­mon Court­ney and Michael Peyr­e­fitte “to set­tle our writ­ten plead­ings.

“Their work will now fo­cus ex­clu­sive­ly on the oral pre­sen­ta­tions to be de­liv­ered next year. I am con­fi­dent that Team Be­lize will be ful­ly pre­pared to present the strongest case as we seek le­gal con­fir­ma­tion that from the mo­ment of our in­de­pen­dence, we have been and re­main sov­er­eign over all our ter­ri­to­ry, land, is­lands, and sea.”

Prime Min­is­ter Briceño said that as the coun­try em­barks on the “fi­nal phase of this long jour­ney, we call on friend­ly coun­tries to con­tin­ue to sup­port this process.

“We ex­pect that our neigh­bors will pro­ceed in peace and mu­tu­al re­spect and in keep­ing with the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions. Above all, I re­new Be­lize’s com­mit­ment to ac­cept the de­ci­sions of the court and to work with Guatemala and Hon­duras to im­ple­ment the court’s de­ci­sions.

“My fel­low Be­lizeans, in­de­pen­dence and our sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty are supreme­ly na­tion­al is­sues. To­geth­er with the op­po­si­tion and all stake­hold­ers, let us look con­fi­dent­ly to the fu­ture. We will spare no re­source. We will scale up our ef­forts. It’s Team Be­lize, one peo­ple, one na­tion with all our ter­ri­to­ry in­tact,” Prime Min­is­ter Briceño added.

Mean­while, the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs has sum­moned the Guatemalan am­bas­sador af­ter Bel­mopan on Mon­day reg­is­tered its “strongest protest” over an in­ci­dent that oc­curred last Thurs­day in which a sig­nif­i­cant de­ploy­ment of Guatemalan mil­i­tary and civil­ian ves­sels ob­struct­ed a group of Be­lizean na­tion­als from com­plet­ing their cus­tom­ary pas­sage around Sarstoon Is­land.

The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of he Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, Os­car Arnold, con­firmed that he had sum­moned the Guatemalan diplo­mat “to de­liv­er the protest note and al­so to ver­bal­ly dis­cuss what we see or what we deem as an in­crease of ac­tiv­i­ty and as well as us­ing civil­ians, which is very, was a grave con­cern for us”

He said “we de­liv­ered the protest note in very strong lan­guage to them” and that the Guatemalan diplo­mat “ac­cept­ed the note, but we al­so spoke about both coun­tries con­tin­u­ing to try to find a peace­ful so­lu­tion.

“He as­sured me and I as­sured the gov­ern­ment af­ter that there has been no change in the stance and the po­si­tion that the Guatemalan gov­ern­ment has tak­en, that they too al­so want to see a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to this is­sue. And so that is the process.

“We would write a note that we would state spe­cif­ic items in the note that we are not pleased with and then we de­liv­er that to their au­thor­i­ties. We sent it through not on­ly the Guatemalan Em­bassy here in Be­lize but through our em­bassy in Guatemala as well to de­liv­er to the for­eign min­istry.

“What we’ve done as well is that we’ve no­ti­fied our friends in CARI­COM, in the Com­mon­wealth as well be­cause we know that they are our biggest sup­port­ers, the Group of Friends as well,” Arnold said.

Last week, the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Al­bert Ramdin said he was “not com­plete­ly sur­prised” at the lat­est flare­up be­tween Be­lize and Guatemala even as he had “hoped that these things would not hap­pen”.

Ramdin said the in­ci­dent “con­firms some­thing which we had al­ready in­di­cat­ed that I do ex­pect in the com­ing months, giv­en the sen­si­tiv­i­ties, In­de­pen­dence Day and all of that, that some groups will cre­ate some in­ci­dents,” he said, adding “so I’m not com­plete­ly sur­prised. I had hoped that these things would not hap­pen”. —BEL­MOPAN, Be­lize (CMC)