The Guyana/ Surinam Boundary Dispute in International Law

• Author: Mr. Justice Duke Pollard
• Pages: 66-110

66 Interview, Border and Maritime Issues in CARICOM

THE GUYANA/SURINAM BOUNDARY

DISPUTE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW*

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3The Hon. Mr. Justice Duke Pollard

*This article does not purport to address the issue of the rights of the parties to the

dispute to exercise sovereignty in the Corentyne River. It is concerned only with the

rights of the parties to the dispute to exercise sovereignty in the New River Triangle.

Introduction

“The territory of Guyana shall comprise all the areas that, immediately

before 26th May, 1966, were comprised in the former Colony of British

Guyana togeth-er with such other areas as may be declared by Act of

Parliament to form part of the territory of Guyana”.

Thus reads Article 1 (2) of the Constitution of Guyana,’ which is bound-

ed on its eastern side by Surinam which was formerly a colony of the

Netherlands before becoming an integral part of the Kingdom of the

Netherlands, the Government of which was, until recently, responsible for

the conduct of its external affairs.2 Since independence, Guyana has been

embroiled in boundary disputes with its neighbours, Venezuela to the West

and Surinam to the East. The resolve of the United Kingdom Gov-ernment to

avoid unnecessary involvement in these disputes during the post-independence

period may be inferred from the extraordinarily Del-phic ambiguity of the

language of Article 1 (2) of the Guyana Constitu-tion referred to above.

Consequently, Guyana is now placed in the situa-tion of defending, alone, its

territorial integrity by whatever means appear to be desirable and efficacious.

So far, Guyana has opted to ground its claims to continued jurisdiction in the

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The Guyana/Surinam Boundary Dispute in International Law

disputed areas on an appeal to law. And the purpose of this present discussion

is to examine the dispute between Guyana and Surinam in order to arrive at

a credible assessment of the legal claims of the disputants.

On December 13, 1967, armed Guyanese policemen, acting in the course

of their duties, expelled some Surinamers, allegedly engaged in “hydrological

surveys”, from territory west of the Corentyne-Kutari River. The Netherlands

Government registered a formal protest against these measures as constituting

“a grave breach of the sovereignty of the territory of Surinam”. This protest

was transmitted to the Guyana High Commissioner in London by the

Netherlands Ambassador in the United Kingdom.3 Guyana’s response to this

claim assumed the form of a Note which was sent by the Guyana High

Commissioner in London to the Netherlands Ambassador to the United

Kingdom.4

In this Note it was stated that:

(i) Guyana’s boundary with Surinam was the Corentyne-Kutari River;

(ii) all the territory west of the Corentyne-Kutari River, including the

region where the Surinamers were found, was juridically and

administra-tively Guyanese territory and had been continuously and

at all material times administered as such;

(iii) permission had not been sought by nor granted to the Government

of Surinam nor to any Surinam agency whatsoever to undertake

hydro-logical surveys in the area west of the Corentyne-Kutari River;

(iv) consequently, the presence of the Surinamers in question on the

territory of Guyana was illegal and constituted a breach of the

territorial integrity of Guyana; and, finally

(v) the action taken by the Guyanese policemen, who had acted with

commendable restraint in the circumstances, was a legitimate exercise

of Guyana’s territorial sovereignty.

On August 19, 1969, a military unit of the Guyana Defence Force, during

a routine air patrol of Guyana’s territory, encountered a number of armed

Surinamers engaged in the construction of an airstrip in the area of the South

Eastern region of Guyana known as the New River Triangle. The unit landed

on an airstrip and challenged the intruders who offered armed resistance and

then fled to a point on the New River from which they escaped unharmed.

The Surinamers left behind them carbines, shot- guns, ammunition, a

landrover, a bulldozer and a number of structures -whose purpose was not

definitively established before August 22, 1969, when a thorough examination

68 Interview, Border and Maritime Issues in CARICOM

of the area was completed. This incident led to an exchange of Notes in

which the Guyana Government protested against the infringement of Guyana’s

territorial integrity by the Govern-ment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands/

Surinam and the latter demand-ed the immediate withdrawal of Guyana’s

troops from the area. What follows is an attempt to examine the merits of the

arguments of the parties to the dispute through a dispassionate ascertainment

of the facts in dispute and the application of generally accepted norms of

international law to the facts found.

Historical Background To The Dispute

Berbice, the most easterly of the three counties into which Guyana is

divided, occupies a landmass contiguous to that of western Surinam. It was

first settled in 1627 by a Dutch merchant, Abraham van Peere, under authority

granted by the Zeeland Chamber.5 In 1652, a successful English colony was

planted on the Surinam River by Lord Willoughby of Parham, under a grant

from Charles II. In the early years, therefore, Berbice was a Dutch and Surinam

an English possession. But in the fashion of imperial rivalries the colonies

often changed hands, and these changes have played their part in the

controversy regarding the boundary between Guyana and Surinam. During

the Second Dutch War between England and Holland, Surinam was conquered

by the Dutch, and the Treaty of Breda, 1667, left the colony in Dutch

possession.6 Some time after, van Peere of Berbice and Somelsdyk of Surinam,

Dutch proprietors of these adjacent colonies, purported to fix the line of

demarcation between their respective estates at Devil’s Creek, a creek which

is situated to the west of the Corentyne River. Van Battenburg, Governor of

Berbice, apparently did not consider this private arrangement between the

abovementioned proprietors as con-stituting a valid delimitation of territorial

boundaries between the two Dutch colonies, and in a letter to the Directors

of Berbice pointed out that, in keeping with the grant of Charles II, the

English King, to Lord Willoughby, the western limit of Surinam could not be

regarded as extend-ing further than one English mile west of the Surinam

River-a river which in fact lay several miles to the east of the Corentyne

River.7

By 1799, colonial fortunes dictated that Berbice and Surinam become

British Colonies. Four years previously, Napoleon had imposed humilia-ting

terms on Prussia at the Peace of Basel.8 In tacit recognition of the imminent

collapse of European resistance to French hegemonic ambitions, Holland