Link to article: https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-essequibo-elections-guyana-dispute-court-1cce4c00820a7048bc7c0f98ca27f273
A resource rich region in South America is being disputed over. Both Guyanna and Venezuala claim this area, known as the Essequibo region, is there own. The United Nations had to adress this matter as Venezuala planned to hold elections for an official governer of that region. The United Nation’s top court ruled that Venezuala may not hold these elections, but on Friday April 25 Venezuala rejected the ruling. This issue was ruled by the request of Guyana, and the Venezualan governments stated, “Its defense is a historical, constitutional, and a moral mandate that unites the entire Bolivarian Homeland. No international pressure, judicial blackmail, or foreign tribunal will make us back down from this conviction.”
Countries can only make a profit off of what they have within there borders, so to these countries this peice of land may be the difference between surviving or not. Therefore Venezuala’s decision to reject the UN’s ruling was them saying that this peice of land is more important to them than their international standing. In fact, the Venezualan government choose to comment saying that they have never followed the rulings of the ICJ before and they asserted that international law does not allow the body to “interfere” or “attempt to prohibit” an election. Espeacially since their are no “world police” and the UN isn’t a sovereign body, the state is.
This situation also goes to show why a world government could not work. If one body had sovereignty over the whole world and they choose one side of this argument, it would lead to retaliation and even loss of life. But if they choose to compromise and split the land it could lead to both countries economic collapses, seeing as resource rich regions are extremely valuable to exploit. So sometimes it is better to let the two countries handle it diplomatically rather than intervening, which could make the situation worse off.