State Succession

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The Partition of India and Pakistan: Lessons on UN Membership in the Event of a Break-Up of a State

August 21, 2017

70 years ago today (21 August 1947) the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 29 recommending that the General Assembly admit Pakistan to membership of the United Nations. That resolution was adopted a few days after British India was partitioned, and the emergence on 15 August 1947 of the newly independent countries of India and Pakistan. Of the many issues that arose out of the decolonisation of India, one new legal issue was how to deal with membership of the emergent states in the recently created United Nations. The UN was faced for the first time with an issue, which has proved to be a recurring one in the history of the UN: how should the organization deal with the break-up of an existing member? There have since been many cases where a number of states have emerged on the territory of an existing member after a break-up of the member (the most recent cases being Montenegro's separation from Serbia in 2006 and South Sudan's separation from Sudan in 2011). In all of these…

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Palestine v. Israel: 1:0? Palestine, Israel and FIFA: What Are the Laws of the Game? Part II

June 25, 2015

This is Part II of a two-part post. See Part I here. Suspension of membership A second category of FIFA membership issues related to international law relates to possible suspension of membership. Under Art. 14 FIFA Statute, it is the FIFA Congress that is responsible for suspending a member association,…

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Scottish Independence and EU Membership: Part I

September 10, 2014

Introduction As the campaigns for and against Scottish independence move into their final rounds of sparring before the vote on 18 September, the question of Scottish membership of the European Union (EU) sits (relatively) quietly in the background. And no wonder: a question which involves the interaction between the complexities of international, EU and domestic law,…

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Crimea: Does “The West“ Now Pay the Price for Kosovo?

April 22, 2014

There is a lingering sentiment on this blog (see the posts by Nico Krisch and Christian Marxsen) that “the Kosovo issue” has facilitated the blatant violations of international law recently committed by Russia with regard to Crimea (notably the unlawful annexation of that territory), and that “the West’s” behaviour in the Kosovo context now prevents clear…

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Sense and Nonsense of Territorial Referendums in Ukraine, and Why the 16 March Referendum in Crimea Does Not Justify Crimea’s Alteration of Territorial Status under International Law

April 16, 2014

Yesterday, on 15 April 2014, Ukrainian interim president Turtschinov considered to hold, simultaneously with the presidential elections, a referendum on regional competences in Ukraine. On 8 April 2014, separatists in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk proclaimed that they would hold a referendum on the independence of that Eastern region of…

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