Guatemalans on Sunday voted overwhelmingly to send a centuries-old border dispute with neighboring Belize to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands, for final resolution, preliminary referendum results showed.
A total of 95.89 percent voted “yes,” with votes from more than 92 percent of polling stations accounted for, Gustavo Castillo of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said.
Polls closed at 6pm after 11 hours of voting, which took place “without reports of security incidents,” tribunal president Maria Eugenia Mijangos said.
However, despite 7.5 million Guatemalans being summoned to the ballot box, the vote was marked by a low turnout.
The border disagreement, the roots of which go back two centuries, has seen tensions spike from time to time. Two years ago, Guatemala mobilized 3,000 troops along the densely forested unmarked border zone after an incident in which a Guatemalan teenager was fatally shot.
A Belize border patrol officer had opened fire after being shot at, but an investigation by the Organization of American States found it not responsible for the death.
The two nations agreed in 2008 to send the dispute to The Hague-based ICJ if the people of both nations approved.
Observers from 25 nations were on hand to monitor the polling.
Belize has not yet fixed a date for its referendum on the issue, although officials say it could take place next year.
The Guatemalan plebiscite asked voters to respond “yes” or “no” as to whether any legal claims by Guatemala against Belize relating to its territories “should be submitted to the International Court of Justice for final settlement” and boundary determination.
Mijangos told reporters that voter apathy was a big risk. Efforts by Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales to boost turnout have foundered on the rocks of his low popularity.
“We are calling on all Guatemalans, especially the youth making up the majority of the electorate, to participate, to go to polling stations to put in their vote on this very important issue which has taken so many years to find a solution to,” Mijangos said.
Morales said as he voted that the two nations had “very good bilateral relations” and he hoped the dispute could be resolved.
Guatemala has made claims to over more than half of Belize’s territory, dating back to when its English-speaking neighbor was a British colony.
The border issue goes back to 1783, when Spain gave Britain the right to occupy the territory that became Belize and exploit its timber in exchange for combating piracy.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing