Abstract:

Permissibility of Unilateral Military Interventions to Assist Self-Determination in International Law: State Practice and United Nations' ResponsesT his article aims to examine and analyze the problematic clash of the most promoted right of self-determination with the most enshrined norms of non-use of force and non-intervention in domestic affairs in international law. It specifically addresses the question of justification of the use of force on the basis of assistance to peoples in their struggle for 'external' self-determination, and examine the permissibility of the state justifications for military intervention in support of external self-determination, by analyzing three Cold War cases where it was specifically invoked as the legal ground for military intervention and the United Nations (UN) reactions to them. The main contention of the article is that despite the incontestable meaning attached to self-determination, the historical record of the UN responses to such military interventions demonstrates that the right of self-determination does not lend itself to an unquestionable legal right for a state to take a unilateral military action and intervene in domestic affairs of another state.

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