Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodríguez travelled to The Hague on Sunday to defend her country's long-standing territorial claim over the Essequibo region before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), even as she declared that Caracas does not recognise the court's authority to settle the dispute. Her appearance before the UN's principal judicial organ, located in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, marked her first significant international trip since she assumed office as interim leader following the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro by US forces in January.

The ICJ this week concluded the substantive phase of hearings in a case that Guyana brought in 2018, seeking confirmation of an 1899 arbitral award that established the border between Venezuela and what was then British Guiana, assigning the Essequibo region — approximately 160,000 square kilometres, or roughly two-thirds of Guyana's total territory — to the British side. Venezuela declared that ruling null and void in 1962, calling it a colonial fraud, and in 1966 signed the Geneva Agreement with the United Kingdom, a treaty that called for a peaceful negotiated settlement just before Guyanese independence. It is that agreement, Rodríguez argued upon arrival in Amsterdam, that constitutes the only valid framework for resolving the dispute. Her delegation presented the court with historical maps and Spanish royal decrees from 1777 as evidence of Venezuela's claim.

Guyana's Foreign Minister Hugh Hilton Todd told the court at the opening of proceedings that the dispute