Nevertheless, the Colombian Congress did not endorse this statement since decisions over limits and borders are under the jurisdiction of Congress. In 1952, during the interim government of Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs Juan Uribe Holguín acknowledged the sovereignty of Venezuela over Los Monjes islets, through a diplomatic note that was not authorized by the government.
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Meanwhile, Venezuela’s thesis is that the islets are an extension of its border thus applying the middle-line principle between the La Guajira peninsula (Colombian territory) and Los Monjes. Thus, the Colombian thesis establishes a boundary using the middle-line principle between the mainland territories of the two countries, thus recognizing Los Monjes as an enclave within the Colombian territorial sea. Consequently, both countries claim different rights over the area: Colombia argues that the islets, located at 20 nautical miles from the Colombian shores, cannot be considered as part of the continental shelf. Likewise, the convention defined continental shield extensions as the portion of the continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical mile limit. Territorial waters, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, are the belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22.2 km 13.8 mi) from the baseline of a coastal state. While Colombia insists Los Monjes is within its territorial waters, Venezuela claims it as an extension of its own continental shelf. The countries have referred to different historical documents and theses to justify their claims to this area. Ever since Gran Colombia, the post-colonial state that encompassed Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama, dissolved in 1831, both Venezuela and Colombia have failed to agree on the limits of their territorial waters over the Gulf, specifically Los Monjes islets.
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As a result, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, María Ángela Holguin, delivered a note of protest to the Venezuelan government regarding the decree’s implicit claim over the area, in dispute for at least 200 years.Ī historical review of the dispute helps to put the current situation in context. Tovar, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric AffairsĪ long standing border dispute between Colombia and Venezuela over the area known as the Gulf of Venezuela, or Gulf of Coquibacoa, resurfaced when the recent decree of President Nicolás Maduro established this area as an “operating maritime and insular zone of integral defense.” On May 26, after the Guyanese government contracted ExxonMobil to look for offshore oil in an area that Caracas claims as its own, Maduro took measures to establish Venezuela’s sovereignty over several areas, including the aforementioned, through Decree 1.787.