A lot of my work involves steady slogging against the prevailing political winds. So when I get not one but two favourable gusts filling my sails on the same day, it is definitely worth noting
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1) *nods* Somewhat encouraging. No, shouldn't be a precondition for sovereignty, just a rather significant concern!
2) Interesting. Seems international law is more favourable to secession than I thought (and than the Russians are suggesting), but still more restrictive than I would personally like. This condition that the would-be secessionists constitute a 'people' sounds like a dangerously 'blood-based' definition of nationhood. Again with Bangladesh, bit hard to say that they were a 'people' as distinct from... which exact people? Who are the Pakistani 'people'? And this would seem to me to tend to exacerbate the problems of defining the borders of any potential secessionist entity. What about mixed regions,etc.
Anyway, it does sound fairly convincing that Kosovan independence is not the flagrant disregarding of international law the Serbs and Russians make it out to be.
(On a tangent, that Canadian ruling would seem to suggest that the Turkish Kurds have a darned good case for 'external self-determination' - clearly a 'people', have had human rights abused, no ability to exercise 'internal' SD, and no obvious solution in sight within the Turkish state (though things are improving a little). But there'd be the huge problem if something like this were ever seriously considered of where you'd draw the boundary, who's a Kurd and whose not (e.g. large number of self-defined Kurds who are Turkish-speaking), what about the Turkish minority in Kurdish areas etc. Again the problem with the 'people' definition.)
3) D'oh, yes of course there was! So more broadly I guess the answer is that there is no absolute set of rules that govern all cases, but it'll be a mixture of the various principles of IL and what one might call 'facts on the ground'. Though I tend to the view that in practice all the major powers will regard 'what pleases them as honorable and what suits their interests as just', and apply principles of state sovereignty or self-determination in different cases accordingly. I really know too little about it. Is there a good (legal and/or moral) case why S. Ossetia should be compelled to remain part of Georgia regardless of the wishes of their inhabitants?
4) I mean external military intervention, which applies in the case of Bangladesh though not Eritrea. But then if there are cases where a group may potentially have a 'right to secede' then the ramifications are not as far-reaching - it does not confer a general precedent for invading and carving up states.
2) Interesting. Seems international law is more favourable to secession than I thought (and than the Russians are suggesting), but still more restrictive than I would personally like. This condition that the would-be secessionists constitute a 'people' sounds like a dangerously 'blood-based' definition of nationhood. Again with Bangladesh, bit hard to say that they were a 'people' as distinct from... which exact people? Who are the Pakistani 'people'? And this would seem to me to tend to exacerbate the problems of defining the borders of any potential secessionist entity. What about mixed regions,etc.
Anyway, it does sound fairly convincing that Kosovan independence is not the flagrant disregarding of international law the Serbs and Russians make it out to be.
(On a tangent, that Canadian ruling would seem to suggest that the Turkish Kurds have a darned good case for 'external self-determination' - clearly a 'people', have had human rights abused, no ability to exercise 'internal' SD, and no obvious solution in sight within the Turkish state (though things are improving a little). But there'd be the huge problem if something like this were ever seriously considered of where you'd draw the boundary, who's a Kurd and whose not (e.g. large number of self-defined Kurds who are Turkish-speaking), what about the Turkish minority in Kurdish areas etc. Again the problem with the 'people' definition.)
3) D'oh, yes of course there was! So more broadly I guess the answer is that there is no absolute set of rules that govern all cases, but it'll be a mixture of the various principles of IL and what one might call 'facts on the ground'. Though I tend to the view that in practice all the major powers will regard 'what pleases them as honorable and what suits their interests as just', and apply principles of state sovereignty or self-determination in different cases accordingly. I really know too little about it. Is there a good (legal and/or moral) case why S. Ossetia should be compelled to remain part of Georgia regardless of the wishes of their inhabitants?
4) I mean external military intervention, which applies in the case of Bangladesh though not Eritrea. But then if there are cases where a group may potentially have a 'right to secede' then the ramifications are not as far-reaching - it does not confer a general precedent for invading and carving up states.
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