1 December 2006 - 15:04International Mapping Assists the Government of Guyana in its Oral Pleadings before The International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS)

Throughout the month of December, a team of cartographers from International Mapping assisted the Government of Guyana and their legal Counsel in preparing and presenting maps and related graphics before an ITLOS Tribunal convened in Washington DC. The hearings represented the culmination of more than two years of mapping work concerning their maritime boundary dispute between Guyana and neighboring Suriname.

In 2000 Suriname’s navy confronted a Guyanese oil licensee forcing them to shut down exploratory drill operations in the disputed maritime area. In response to Suriname’s military action Guyana brought their maritime boundary dispute with Suriname to arbitration under Article 287 and Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

As part of the legal team assisting Guyana, our role was to supply custom digital mapping services for all phases of the case. The oral hearing phase utilized many of the print maps that we prepared for the written pleadings, but in an animated format where information was layered onto the base map as the speaker was describing it. This layering of information greatly helps the retention of information with complex data sets.

The Guayana/Suriname hearing marked the fourteenth international litigation in which our cartographers have assisted a foreign government in defining the limits to their sovereignty over land or maritime areas.