Last night we told you about a motion in the Senate which would see Belize taking Honduras to the International Court of Justice.
Foreign Minister Eamon Courtenay asked for the senate's support to the accession to the Pact of Bogota - through which Belize could take Honduras to the ICJ to determine full and final ownership of the Sapodilla Cayes. Guatemala, which also claims the Sapodillas, would invariably be brought into this case.
The hope is that a once and for all determination by the court over which country holds sovereignty over those islands would eliminate the future hassle of having to launch a separate claim against Honduras.
But, it would cause a delay in the Belize-Guatemala ICJ case where the current schedule says that Guatemala should submit its reply on 8 December 2022, and the rejoinder from Belize will follow on the 8th June 2023. The Minister of Foreign Affairs discussed how this new case would extend that timeline:
Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"It may delay it for some months. The guesstimate is anywhere from months to a year in order to get the whole Honduras case, the Honduras case is a very narrow and simple thing, who has sovereignty over these particular cases. That's not a long case. It's not like the one that Guatemala has commenced which is going back from time in memorial where they are trying to prove that they owned or were sovereign of over Belize. So we expect the pleadings to be quick hence we can bring the cases either heard together or heard right after, one after the other."
