Reckoning With Empire Self Determination In International Law

The book adopts a new approach to self-determination’s international legal history, tracing the ways in which various actors have sought to reinvent self-determination in different juridical, political, and economic iterations to create the conditions for global transformation.

Peoples and minorities in many parts of the world assert a right to self-determination, autonomy, and even secession from a state, which naturally conflicts with that state's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The right of a people to self-determination and secession has existed as a concept within international law since the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, but the exact definition of these concepts, and the conditions required for their application, remain unclear. The Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice concerning the Declaration of Independency of Kosovo (2010), which held that the Kosovo declaration of independence was not in violation of international law, has only led to further questions. This book takes four conflicts in the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a starting point for examining the current state of the law of self-determination and secession. Four entities, Transnistria (Moldova), South Ossetia, Abkhazia (both Georgia), and Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan), claim to be entitled not only to self-determination but also to secession from their mother state. For this entitlement they rely on historic affiliations, and on charges of discrimination and massive human rights violations committed by their mother state. This book sets out its analysis of these critical issue in three parts, providing a detailed understanding of the principles of international law on which they rely: The first part sets out the contours and meaning of self-determination and secession, including an overall assessment of secession within the Commonwealth of Independent States. The second section provides case studies investigating the events in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabach in greater detail. The third and final section extends the scope of the examination, providing a comparative analysis of similar conflicts involving questions of self-determination and secession in Kosovo, Western Sahara, and Eritrea.

In analysing the contemporary International Law principles as to Self-determination of Peoples, Dr. Edward McWhinney gives a special attention to the crisis today of multinational states put together, usually hurriedly and without proper regard for foreseeable later problems in establishing a plural-constitutional order system, by the military victors in World War I in the imposed Peace treaties of 1919. The key to successful exercise of a claimed right to self-determination is Recognition by other, existing states in the World Community and today also admission to the United Nations. In examining the classical rules on Recognition of States and the recent developed practice as to U.N. Membership, the author signals the continuing antinomy of Law and Power and how high political concerns for their own conceived national interests influence or control decisions on application of the legal ground rules in concrete cases by heads of government and their foreign ministries. The author notes at the same time the attempt to consolidate and codify existing rules on a political "regional" basis, most evident perhaps with the European Union today. In addressing the claimed new legal category of "failed state" with the concomitant asserted legal right of other states to intervene, if necessary unilaterally or outside the United Nations, to impose their own "corrective" measures, he suggests that the postulated "failure" in such cases may frequently stem less from problems inherent in the state concerned than from past hegemonial actions by outside states in pursuit of their own geopolitical interests in the region. A special concluding chapter draws on the empirical record of the historical, often trial-and-error experience of the Succession states to the Versailles treaties settlements and to the assorted acts of Decolonisation of the former European Imperial, Colonial powers.

Presents the legal cases for self-determination in East Timor, Kosovo, Chechnya, Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and in South Sudan.

This book examines the conceptual and political history of the right of self-determination of peoples.

The right of peoples to self-determination seems well-settled and covered extensively in the scholarly record. Yet old Trotsky’s question – of whom is this right and to what? – haunts the self-determination literature. Somehow almost every work on it begins with an expression of puzzlement. This right turns out to be elusive, underdefined in its scope and content, paradoxical in almost every aspect. This book mobilises all powers of critical legal theory and modern philosophy to take the bull by its horns. Instead of ironing out the paradoxes, it aims to finally give them a proper explanation based on the concept of exception.