Secession

Abstract The Charter of the United Nations and several other international instruments refer to the concept of self-determination in terms of its relationship to ‘peoples’. Self-determination in international law is the process whereby ‘peoples’ are entitled to determine their own political status. However, self determination also necessarily involves territorial considerations of one sort or another. A claim to self-determination is usually not only a claim by a people to determine their own political status, but also represents a claim to territory.1 If ethnic groups are defined as peoples, the territorial dismemberment of existing states could ensue if such groups decided to form their own nation-states. This Chapter examines territorial integrity and the question of secession with respect to both non-self-governing territories and independent states.