South Sudan v Kosovo: secession, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity

Both parties - the State and the insurrectionary group - are bound by these few rules. If they violate them, they may be committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

V. Secession in International Law

The new state of Kosovo has been immediately recognized by the USA, Germany, and other major European powers. The Canadian Supreme Court made clear in its ruling in the Quebec case in 1998 that the status of statehood is not conditioned upon such recognition, but that (p. 289):

"...(T)he viability of a would-be state in the international community depends, as a practical matter, upon recognition by other states."

The constitutional law of some federal states provides for a mechanism of orderly secession. The constitutions of both the late USSR and SFRY (Yugoslavia, 1974) incorporated such provisions. In other cases - the USA, Canada, and the United Kingdom come to mind - the supreme echelons of the judicial system had to step in and rule regarding the right to secession, its procedures, and mechanisms.

Again, facts on the ground determine international legitimacy. As early as 1877, in the wake of the bloodiest secessionist war of all time, the American Civil War (1861-5), the Supreme Court of the USA wrote (in William vs. Bruffy):

The validity of (the secessionists') acts, both against the parent State and its citizens and subjects, depends entirely upon its ultimate success. If it fail (sic) to establish itself permanently, all such acts perish with it. If it succeed (sic), and become recognized, its acts from the commencement of its existence are upheld as those of an independent nation.

In "The Creation of States in International Law" (Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 2006), James Crawford suggests that there is no internationally recognized right to secede and that secession is a "legally neutral act". Not so. As Aleksandar Pavkovic observes in his book (with contributions by Peter Radan), "Creating New States - Theory and Practice of Secession" (Ashgate, 2007), the universal legal right to self-determination encompasses the universal legal right to secede.

The Albanians in Kosovo are a "people" according to the Decisions of the Badinter Commission. But, though, they occupy a well-defined and demarcated territory, their land is within the borders of an existing State. In this strict sense, their unilateral secession does set a precedent: it goes against the territorial definition of a people as embedded in the United Nations Charter and subsequent Conventions.

Still, the general drift of international law (for instance, as interpreted by Canada's Supreme Court) is to allow that a State can be composed of several "peoples" and that its cultural-ethnic constituents have a right to self-determination. This seems to uphold the 19th century concept of a homogenous nation-state over the French model (of a civil State of all its citizens, regardless of ethnicity or religious creed).