What is the issue?
- Various territories across the world want to form a new country.
- As new countries are suddenly in high demand, let us look into how a country is formed.
How does a territory become a new country?
- There is no straightforward rule.
- Beyond a few set requirements, a region’s quest for nationhood mainly depends on how many countries and international organisations it manages to convince to recognise it as a country.
- The biggest sanction of nationhood is the United Nations recognising a territory as a country.
Who can declare themselves a country?
- Anyone. There is no law barring regions from declaring independence.
- Bougainville, an island in the Pacific, is holding a referendum to decide if it wants to remain a part of Papua New Guinea or become an independent country.
- A fugitive godman of India has reportedly founded his own country somewhere in the Pacific and named it as Kailaasa.
- Across the world, various territories are agitating for independence - Catalonia in Spain, Kurdistan in Iraq, Tibet in China, etc.,
- In Jharkhand in 2017-18, as part of the Pathalgadi movement declared the gram sabha as the only sovereign authority.
What criteria must a nation-hopeful meet?
- Broadly, four, as decided in 1933’s Montevideo Convention.
- A country-hopeful must have a defined territory, people, government, and the ability to form relationships with other countries.
- A country’s “people” are defined as a significantly large population sharing a belief in their nationality.
- Factors also kept in mind are if a majority has clearly expressed the desire to break away from the parent country, and if the minority communities’ rights will be safeguarded.
What is self-determination vs territorial integrity?
- In June 1945, the right of “self-determination” was included in the UN charter.
- This means that a population has the right to decide how and by whom it wants to be governed.
- However, another of the oldest, widely accepted international rules is that of countries respecting each other’s territorial integrity.
- While a population has the right to break off from the parent country, quick recognition of their claim would mean other nations are agreeing to the carving up of one country.
- The conflict - The right to self-determination was introduced when a few colonial powers were dominating most countries, and questions of right were relatively easier to settle.
- Today, the issue becomes thorny and shapes up either as granting of greater autonomy to certain regions within a country, prolonged armed conflicts, or both.
- Thus, though Taiwan says it is a country, other nations defer to China’s feelings about it.
Why UN recognition matters?
- UN recognition means a new country has access to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), etc.
- Its currency is recognised, which allows it to trade.
- Often, UN member states recognise a country, but not the UN as a body.
- This puts a country in the grey area with respect to protection against parent country’s aggression, and international trade.
- Factors - By and large, so far, a country swinging the UN’s opinion in its favour has depended on,
- How many of the big powers back it, and
- How much international influence its parent country wields at that time.
- Instance - East Timor, then a Portuguese colony, was invaded by Indonesia in the 1960s.
- But the western powers then needed Indonesia as an ally against Russia, and East Timor’s woes didn’t get much attention.
- By the 1990s, power alignments had changed, and East Timor managed to hold a referendum by 1999 and declare independence in 2002.
Source: The Indian Express
