The International Court of Justice has opened oral hearings in The Hague in the long-running boundary dispute between Guyana and Venezuela, with Guyana asking the court to affirm the century-old border between the two states.

The case turns on a line drawn well over one hundred years ago. Guyana, which filed the case, wants the court to declare that boundary legally valid and binding. Venezuela disputes that outcome.

What does Guyana want the court to decide?

Guyana's request is straightforward in form. It asks the ICJ to affirm the existing boundary, which dates from the late nineteenth century, as the legal border between the two countries. The oral hearings now under way mark the stage at which both sides present their arguments directly to the judges.

The court has not yet decided the merits. Hearings are argument, not judgment. A ruling will follow in due course, and ICJ proceedings of this kind typically run for months or years before a final decision.

Who decides, and when does it bind?

The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, seated at The Hague in the Netherlands. Its judgments are final and without appeal between the parties that appear before it.

Venezuela has long contested the court's role in the matter, while Guyana has pressed the case forward at every procedural stage. That tension between consent and jurisdiction sits at the heart of the litigation.

What is at stake practically?

The border region is a territorial question, and territorial questions at the ICJ tend to settle more than lines on a map. A ruling affirming the century-old boundary would give Guyana legal certainty over the territory on its side of that line. A contrary outcome, or a collapse of jurisdiction, would reopen questions that have been treated as settled for generations.

For practitioners, the case is a study in how old instruments are litigated in modern courts. The dispute concerns events and agreements from more than a century ago, yet the procedure is thoroughly contemporary: written pleadings, oral hearings, and a bench of fifteen judges.

What happens next?

The hearings continue at the Peace Palace. The court will hear the parties, then deliberate. No date for judgment has been set.

The takeaway is plain: Guyana has asked the world's highest civil court to confirm that an old border remains the border, and the court is now listening.

By Amara Osei, Global Law Wire