YESTERDAYS OPINION by the International Court of Justice that Kosovo’s February 2008 declaration of independence “did not violate general international law” represents an important diplomatic coup for the young Kosovan state, and is a landmark legal ruling that is also likely to give a political fillip to secessionist movements the world over. Reading the ruling the court’s president Hisashi Owada added that “international law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence.”
The decision is the first by the UN’s court on the standing in international law of a unilateral declaration of independence by a territory of a UN member-state. The non-binding ruling arose from a question submitted to the court by the UN General Assembly at Serbia’s request, and it will return to the general assembly which is entitled to make the final decision on the issue. To date only 69 of 192 UN states, including 22 out of 27 EU member states, Ireland among them, have formally recognised Kosovo, well short of the two-thirds necessary for the state to be admitted to the UN and, although the ruling is likely to swell pro-Kosovan ranks, it may yet not be sufficient to see it admitted to the world body.
The welcome ruling enhances the political legitimacy of the Pristina government, but there is a danger it will also serve to encourage a hardline crackdown on the country’s 120,000 Serb minority, particularly in the northern town of Mitrovica. The challenge of reassuring alienated Serbs and encouraging them to see Kosovan independence as a fait accompli and the new state as their home will not be easy. But, as Pristina will be told by its European friends, it will only succeed through dialogue and the rigorous enshrining in law and practice of minority rights. That dialogue must also be encouraged by Serbia, although it is refusing to accept the courts decision and continues to regard Kosovo as a province. Its continued refusal to let Kosovo go its own way is simply not compatible in the long term with its vocation to join the European Union.
Yet, paradoxically, the ruling may also be seen as lending encouragement to Serbian nationalists in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska enclave where pressures to secede from the federal state are likely to increase. And the ruling will be seen as a mixed blessing in Moscow, a backer of Serbia on the need to uphold territorial integrity, but it will welcome the weakening of the West’s case against the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Russia. Swings and roundabouts.