Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, rejected on Saturday the 1899 Paris arbitral award and again invited Georgetown to resolve the dispute over the nearly 160,000-square-kilometer Essequibo region through dialogue.

In a social media message, acting president Rodríguez said the date marked 127 years since the “fraudulent Paris Arbitral Award,” which she said sought to strip Venezuela of an important part of its territory. She reaffirmed Venezuela’s historical position on “our Guayana Essequiba” and stressed that the 1966 Geneva Agreement is the only valid legal instrument for resolving the territorial controversy, through a practical, satisfactory and mutually acceptable arrangement for both parties.

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“Venezuela will not endorse the anachronistic reissue of this territorial fraud through Guyana’s unilateral action before the ICJ,” she said, according to the message. “Any effective solution must arise from negotiation between both countries.” She also ratified “our commitment to legality and good neighborly relations in defending our rights,” the message said.

In an official statement, the Foreign Ministry reaffirmed that “the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela reaffirms before the international community its historical, firm and irrevocable position of rejection of the invalid and fraudulent 1899 Paris Arbitral Award,” which it called an “artifice vitiated by nullity from its origins.”

The 1899 award granted the disputed region to the former British Guiana. Venezuela recalls that the 1899 award was a dispossession orchestrated by foreign powers. Since then, Georgetown has administered the disputed territory. Caracas declared the ruling null in 1962, asserting that it was surrounded by irregularities. Four years later, the 1966 Geneva Agreement was signed, in which the parties committed to seeking a peaceful solution through direct dialogue.

With no progress, the case went to the International Court of Justice, a jurisdiction Venezuela does not recognize.

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