The Republic of Guyana’s ambassador to the United States discussed how the country’s ethnic composition, involvement in geopolitical events and environmental policy deliberations have shaped how the country is perceived on a global scale at the School of Media & Public Affairs Tuesday.
Samuel Archibald Anthony Hinds, who has served as Guyana’s ambassador to the United States since 2021, said Guyana’s ethnic diversity and diaspora has shaped its approach to public diplomacy and has brought the country into the news amid an ongoing territorial dispute with Venezuela over the oil-rich Essequibo region along the northeastern coast of South America. Director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication Babak Bahador, former Kosovo Ambassador to France Qëndrim Gashi and Adjunct SMPA Professor Jeta Abazi Gashi moderated the conversation as part of IPDGC’s “Engaging America” series in collaboration with the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Initiative.
Hinds said the Republic of Guyana began as a British colony designed for sugar production and was not intended to become its own nation, resulting in a blend of ethnic groups. He said the South American nation, which gained independent in 1966, has a population of about one million and a diaspora of about 500,000 people living in the United States, primarily in New York and New Jersey.
“They return significant remittances to our country, and they can influence the understanding of our people in our country,” Hinds said.
Hinds said an arbitration from 1896 to 1899 resulted in a heavily disputed border line being drawn between Guyana and Venezuela. In 2015, the discovery of oil off the coast of the Essequibo territory between the two countries revived the territory dispute as the region holds strong economic benefits.
Hinds said most Guyanese people live “without awareness” of the border conflict because the disputed area is largely underdeveloped. He said the process of bringing the case to the International Court of Justice began in 2018, and he is expecting there to be a ruling in the next year.
“We in Guyana have been focusing on the ICJ process and we hold that that is where it should be settled, a review of the all that might be said about the arbitration ruling and whether it should be maintained or modified,” Hinds said.
Hinds said people have been looking for oil in Guyana for approximately 100 years. He said that in 1996 representatives from ExxonMobil came to the country to drill offshore, and Guyana “welcomed it,” eventually signing a petroleum benefit sharing agreement with the company in 2016 in which the country gets to keep only 14 percent of its oil revenue.
He said the main theme in Guyana’s newspapers and among the public is the country is being “taken advantage of” and should be getting more money and more of the oil. He said he would prefer if people, both globally and in Guyana, focused on the complexities of how oil is extracted rather than assume that production is something to be “taken for granted.”
“Protesting, and quite often, because wrong is being done. One often loses sight that also we have to live, we have to eat, we have to be clothed, we have a place to live at the same time. And we often get carried away,” Hinds said.
Hinds said since Guyana is comparable to England in land area yet has a much smaller population, there is less pressure on the country’s land and resources. He said the country’s low carbon development strategy, created under Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, focuses on sustainable forest use and advocates for the implementation of carbon credits.
“We are on the top, northern edge of the Amazon forest. And he said, doing services or providing services, we should be paid for it,” Hinds said.
Hinds said the oil found offshore is “sweet, light crude,” and therefore has a lesser impact on the environment compared to heavy crude oil. But he said Guyana is still accused of being “hypocritical” because politicians talk about low carbon development strategies and climate change while oil is “drilled daily” offshore.
“We couldn’t go to a non-oil world immediately, maybe 2050, the earliest we could get to a non oil world. ” Hinds said.
One audience member asked Hinds about Guyana’s foreign policy and approach to diplomacy with the United States given recent military strikes on Venezuela. Hinds said he is “very happy” that the United States is taking positions that discouraged Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro from proceeding into Guyana.
