HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE

The overall aim of the course is to ask what sense and content the term secession has in the international order and what relationships exist between secession and self-determination. We will discuss the transformations of secession in the North-American context and in the European context. We will stress the necessity of deconstructing the tie between self-determination and secession, which oblige to questions the widespread notion that secession is in international law a corollary of the peoples’ right to self-determination. This permits to highlight how secession, when distinguished from self-determination, is an excellent visual angle to observe the limits of self-determination, which has always enjoyed a high reputation in the legal and political thought.
Nationalism, self-determination and secession: an introduction to these political and legal ideas by looking at how people who see themselves as nations challenge the existing order to assert their right to a state of their own.
Firstly we will introduce the key concept of self-determination and will examine the shifting meaning of self-determination from a conceptual angle.
Secondly, we will look at secession and will examine the shifting meaning of its from a conceptual angle: analysing the relation between the common sense (collective) of secession (separation of a concentrated group from a sovereign State) and its individual forms.
We will then analyse the evolution of self-determination (and secession) in international law and in international practice, including references to case studies.
Thirdly I will outline the principal theories that justify secession and reflect on the questions of the territorial choice and borders institution. The specificity of secession stands on its being crisis of every borders’ consolidated configuration and symptom of borders’ tension.
Finally, we will explore the legal and political issues triggered by the new wave of secessionism.