in this short clip I want to introduce

you to the Kosovo advisory opinion of

the International Court of Justice and

also explain the relevance of this

opinion in providing some clarity on the

existence and exact meaning of the right

to self-determination of people's so

let's begin first some words about the

right to self-determination of people so

what does it entail there are a few

treaties that make reference to the

right to self-determination of people's

so one of these treaties is the

International Covenant on Civil and

Political Rights and also the

International Covenant on economic

social and cultural rights both these

treaties have the same provision on the

right to self-determination and let me

quote all peoples have the right of

self-determination by virtue of that

right they freely determine their

political status and freely pursue their

economic social and cultural development

all peoples may also freely dispose of

their natural wealth and resources so

that is one provision we also find

reference to the right to

self-determination in a very famous

resolution adopted by the United Nations

General Assembly in the 1970s the so

called friendly relations declaration so

this too is very interesting I will

quote the relevant paragraph noting in

the foregoing paragraphs that all deal

with the right of self-determination of

people's shall be construed as

authorizing or encouraging any action

which would dismember or impair totally

or in part the territorial integrity or

political unity of sovereign and

independent states conducting themselves

in compliance with the principle of

equal rights and self-determination of

peoples as described above and thus

possessed of a government representing

the whole people belonging to the

territory

so from this paragraph you can

conclude applying an are contrary Oh

reasoning that when a government is not

representing the whole people belonging

to the territory then there would be a

right of self-determination of those

peoples that are not represented there's

a lot of ambiguity about the rights of

people's to self-determination there are

a lot of outstanding questions that are

not yet resolved in international law so

when the UN General Assembly put a

question about the independence of

Kosovo to the International Court of

Justice many people hope that the court

would provide some further clarity on

some of these issues these issues

include what is a people and how can the

right to self-determination be exercised

by those people and then there are

basically two scenarios as so people

could be entitled to internal

self-determination autonomy within an

existing state think of Quebec in Canada

but they might also under certain

circumstances be allowed to secede from

the state which they're in I think now

of Catalonia they are making such a

claim but or think of Crimea as you can

see most of these examples are very

controversial and in any case secession

from an existing state is quite a

drastic measure so if it were allowed it

would only be allowed on the very strict

conditions as an optimum Romanian and

then another question is how does the

right of people's to self-determination

apply outside the context of

decolonization and foreign rule because

in those two cases it is quite clear

what the right entails but the context

the content of the right outside the

context of decolonization or foreign

rule is much more ambiguous so let's now

look at the Kosovo advisory opinion so

basically it was about the claim of

independence by Kosovo

it's always a bit tricky to give an

overview of the history or the

background of Kosovo because much of it

is controversial and disputed but let me

make an attempt and so until the late

1990s Kosovo was an autonomous province

with in Yugoslavia or Republic of Serbia

later but then in 1998 the ethnic

Albanian minority in Kosovo wanted to

break free from serbian oppression and

this was met with a military campaign

directed against them from Yugoslavia

then the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization and NATO

wanted to rescue the ethnic Albanian

minority and conducted military

airstrikes on Yugoslavia then from 1999

until 2008 Kosovo was basically

administered by the international

community by the United Nations until in

2008 Kosovo declared itself independent

and claimed to be a new state and that's

very briefly the history and then in

2010 the United Nations General Assembly

put the following question to the

International Court of Justice seeking

some legal advice from the court I will

quote so the question was is the

unilateral declaration of independence

by the Provisional institutions of

self-government of Kosovo in accordance

with international law and here on the

picture you see the representatives of

this self-government of Kosovo the court

divided its analysis of the question

into two sections one related purely to

the lawfulness of the decoration under

international law general international

law and the other related to the

lawfulness in relation to a particular

UN Security Council resolution but that

I'm going to skip I'm going to look only

at the general international law part so

there were basically three issues that

Court had to address in order to assess

the lawfulness of the Declaration of

Independence by the Kosovar authorities

the first one was is it prohibited under

international law to make such a

declaration of independence and unless

the court said the following you can

read the whole paragraph at home the

court concluded that the practice of

States does not point to the emergence

under international law of a new rule

prohibiting the making of a declaration

of independence in such cases and such

cases refers both to decolonization and

to issuing declaration of independence

in the context of people subject to a

lien subjugation domination and

exploitation and even to other contexts

and so international law contains no

prohibition to issue a declaration of

independence but then some people argue

that such a declaration might be

implicitly prohibited because it

breaches the principle of territorial

integrity as for example codified in

article 2 paragraph 4 of the charter of

the United Nations on this the court was

fairly brief the court concluded that

yes there is such a thing as a principle

of territorial integrity and states are

about to respect the territorial

integrity of other states but that

principle only applies between States so

that principle the principle of

territorial integrity is not binding on

secessionist movements like the forties

of Kosovo also to quote the scope of the

principle of territorial integrity is

confined to the sphere of relations

between states

so by issuing the Declaration of

Independence the Kosovo authorities did

not act in breach of the principle of

territorial integrity some

States wanted the International Court of

Justice not only to assess whether the

issuance of the Declaration of

Independence was wrongful

but whether Kosovo had a right to secede

a right to create a new state and the

Netherlands was one of the countries

that argued for such a thing as a right

of remedial secession but the court did

not really address that issue because in

view of the court that was beyond the

scope of the question put to it by the

UN General Assembly so in the end it did

not assess the conditions that would be

would have to be met in order for a

peoples to claim secession from the

states they are in and this was a bit of

a disappointment to international law

school and scholars like myself so the

question is still open basically so the

conclusion of the advisory opinion of 22

July 2010 is that the declaration of

independence of Kosovo adopted by the

Kosovo authorities on 17 February 2008

did not violate international law but

this is not the same thing as saying

that Kosovo had the rights to secede

from Serbia since then since 2010 many

states have recognized Kosovo as an

independent state so here you see a map

of the world and all the states in green

have recognized these statehood and so

the independence of Kosovo but it's

about it's about half of the

international community that has done so

so many other states do not recognize

Kosovo as an independent state so what

is my conclusion so what's the

decoration law for under general

international law

well state practice does not point to

the emergence of a rule prohibiting the

making of a declaration of independence

the principle of territorial integrity

as qualified in article 2 paragraph 4 of

the UN Charter is confined to the sphere

of relations between States and the

International Court of Justice in its

advisory opinion felt no need to

consider the more general question

whether Kosovo had a right to secede

from the Republic of Serbia thank you

for your attention