Original scientific paper
THE RIGHT TO EXTERNAL SELF-DETERMINATION OUTSIDE OF THE COLONIAL CONTEXT AND THE CASE OF PROCLAMATION OF THE KOSOVO INDEPENDENCE
Petra Perišić
; Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Rijeci
Abstract
The paper analyzes whether secession is one of the possible forms of exercising the right to self-determination. Although numerous international documents, as well as judicial practice, recognize self-determination as one of the fundamental principles of international law, they neither define this right and provide conditions for its application, nor do they define „peoples“ as holders of that right. In state practice and writings of legal scholars, the consensus exists only with respect to internal self-determination (the right to freely choose a political regime) and liberation from the colonial domination. In that context, the Kosovo independence is being analyzed. The author concludes that external self-determination outside of the colonial context might be exceptionally possible if the people (not the national minority!) has been deprived of exercising internal self-determination, but also that the focus of the problem should be removed from the conditions for acquiring external self-determination to ensuring a better respect for the internal one.
Keywords
self-determination; territorial integrity; peoples
Hrčak ID:
119387
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2013.
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