The upcoming installment of The University of the West Indies (UWI) Vice-Chancellor’s Forum will examine the political and legal issues arising from the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy.

Under the theme ‘Guarding Sovereignty’, the virtual event to be carried live on the UWItv website and Facebook pages on Tuesday, December 12, starting at 5:30 p.m.

The presentation, which is a collaborative undertaking of the Office of the Vice-Chancellor and the faculties of law and social sciences at The UWI Cave Hill campus, will be moderated by Professor Cynthia Barrow-Giles, professor of constitutional governance and politics at The UWI Cave Hill. The forum’s panellists include Mohabir Anil Nandlall, attorney-general and minister of legal affairs and member of parliament of Guyana; Ambassador Riyad Insanally, a senior fellow at the Caribbean Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Center for Latin America; Professor Anthony Bryan, founder and co-director of Caribbean Policy Consortium; Professor Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith, senior associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Dr Duane Edwards, senior lecturer, Department of Sociology at the University of Guyana; and Nicole Foster, a law lecturer at the Faculty of Law at The UWI Cave Hill campus. 

The Guyana-Venezuela controversy is as much a political issue as it is a legal one. The controversy involves territorial sovereignty, which is an essential foundation of international relations and the demarcation of territorial borders of states. It also lays bare the various methods by which territorial disputes are resolved internationally, such as arbitration, mediation, and judicial settlement before the International Court of Justice.