Statehood and Self-Determination Reconciling Tradition and Modernity in International Law

The concepts of statehood and self-determination provide the normative structure on which the international legal order is ultimately premised. As a system of law founded upon the issue of territorial control, ascertaining and determining which entities are entitled to the privileges of statehood continues to be one of the most difficult and complex issues. Moreover, although the process of decolonisation is almost complete, the principle of self-determination has raised new challenges for the metropolitan territories of established states, including the extent to which 'internal' self-determination guarantees additional rights for minority and other groups. As the controversies surrounding remedial secession have revealed, the territorial integrity of a state can be questioned if there are serious and persistent breaches of a people's human rights. This volume brings together such debates to reflect further on the current state of international law regarding these fundamental issues.

Foreword James Crawford; Introduction Duncan French; Part I. Statehood and Recognition: 1. Entities that can be states but do not claim to be Yaël Ronen; 2. Unilateral declarations of independence in international law Jure Vidmar; 3. The myth of remedial secession Katherine Del Mar; 4. International responses to the secession attempts of Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, 1989–2009 Grace Bolton; 5. The paradox of Kosovo's Parallel Legal Orders in the Reasoning of the Court's Advisory Opinion Alexandros X. M. Ntovas; 6. The politics of recognition: the question about the final status of Kosovo Jessica Almqvist; 7. Revisiting lessons on the new law of statehood: Palestinian independence in a post-Kosovo world Tamar Megiddo and Zohar Nevo; 8. Somaliland: scrambled by international law? Jackson Nyamuya Maogoto; Part II. Self-Determination: 9. The internal and external aspects of self-determination reconsidered James Summers; 10. Trading fish or human rights in Western Sahara? Self-determination, non-recognition and the EC-Morocco Fisheries Agreement Martin Dawidowicz; 11. Self-determination, peacemaking and peacebuilding: recent trends in African intrastate peace agreements Kelly Stathopoulou; 12. Can religious norms influence self-determination struggles, and with what implications for international law? Katja Samuel; 13. Self-determination, oil and Islam in the face of the League of Nations: the Mosul dispute and the 'non-European' legal terrain Mai Taha; 14. The question of indigenous peoples' rights: a time for reappraisal? Malgosia Fitzmaurice; 15. The Kanak indigenous peoples of New Caledonia: decolonisation and self-determination in practice Jacqui Zalcberg; 16. The ethnic dichotomy of 'self' and 'Other' within Europe: interwar minority protection in perspective Mohammad Shahabuddin; Part III. Tradition, Opportunities and Challenges: The Changing Nature of the State: 17. A monument, identity and nationhood: the case of the Old Bridge of Mostar Jadranka Petrovic; 18. The impact of supranationalism on state sovereignty from the perspective of the legitimacy of international organisations Eric De Brabandere; 19. Democracy out of instrumental reason? Global institutions and the promotion of liberal governance Charlotte Steinorth; 20. Federated entities in international law: disaggregating the federal state? Gleider I. Hernández.

Duncan French is Head of the Law School and Professor of International Law at the University of Lincoln.