De facto states research unit

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What if you follow the traffic signs but never reach the place due to “foreign” presence, which has lasted already for decades? Get as close as possible, take a spy-glass, climb up to the watch tower and have a look at what is beyond the “no-man’s-land”, behind the barbwire fences and mental barriers. If you are lucky, you might see some anomalous and deviant cases routinely operating on the other side. Furthermore, a constant struggle for survival and recognition do not remain unnoticed to your investigative eyes. Welcome to the world of de facto states! 

In our view, de facto states are entities that fulfill the Montevideo criteria for statehood, but lack international recognition. We exclude Palestine and Western Sahara, because they do not have full control over their territories. Although Republika Srpska and Iraqi Kurdistan function as de facto independent states, these entities do not explicitly claim to be independent and therefore are left out as well. South Ossetia may have full control over its territory and even some international recognition, but its governance is outsourced and left in the hands of occupying forces.

Why study these places that legally speaking “do not exist”? Due to their geographical location and the stakes involved, these territories hold considerable power as custodians of geopolitical fault lines and they have the potential to disrupt the strategic balance of the entire region and even the international system. One shouldn’t expect to see de facto states disappearing. Quite to the contrary, blurred international norms create favourable conditions for politically inspired interpretations of what is a state and how to become a state. De Facto States Research Unit provides expertise about places that, legally speaking, “do not exist”.

Blog posts

#Blog Posts

Why States Are Recognizing Palestinian Statehood After October 7th

        Since the beginning of the War in Gaza and Israel, nine additional states have recognised the “State of Palestine”: Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Slovakia, and most recently Armenia. This means …

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#Blog Posts

Turkish Cypriots and “Demographic Danger”

        In March 2024, Bülent Dizdarlı, a respected Turkish Cypriot doctor and former head of the medical association, speculated on his Facebook page that the population of the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) had reached …

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#Blog Posts

The Somaliland-Ethiopia Memorandum of Understanding: Transformational Game Changer or… Not So Fast?

        Earlier this month, Bashe Awil Haji Omar, the chairman of the technical committee charged with implementing the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by Somaliland and Ethiopia declared that the first phase of the committee’s work had …

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