 States are central to international law. As we have seen, international law was created by states for them and it was primarily designed to apply between them. And states are said to be active subjects of international law. But what is a state as a legal subject under international law? Well true, we all know intuitively what a state is. But have you ever met with a state? And while we would all agree that, say, Uruguay is a state, it is very likely that we would disagree on the statehood of some other entities like Palestine or Kosovo or South Ossetia. And what about the so-called Islamic state today? How can we tell that an entity is a state within the meaning of international law? It is usually considered that three elements characterize a state, a territory, a population and an effective government. Those three elements are notably recalled by the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, a convention concluded during the Seventh International Conference of American States in 1933. The convention is set to codify the criteria for statehood and to codify also the declarative theory of statehood, something I'll come back to. The Montevideo Convention adds a fourth element, namely I quote the capacity to enter into relations with the other states. However, let us consider that this fourth element is somehow included in the notion of effective government. It is indeed the external aspect of an effective government to be able to entertain international relations. A quick word on each of those elements. First, territory. There is no state without a territory that is an area of land attached to the crust of this planet. This is because us human beings will live on the ground, not in the sea or in the air. And it must be a natural territory, not an artificial platform above the waves. However, there is no need to have a territory with clear and undisputed borders all around. What matters is the control over a certain territory. The size of the territory does not matter. There are huge states like Russia and micro states like Monaco. If size of the territory does not matter, it nevertheless remains that, as some have said, international law is obsessed with territory. And it is true that many disputes have existed and still exist today between states on issues of title, of title to territory and about border delimitations. In this course, it will be just impossible to review all the principles and the rules applicable to territorial issues, but some of them you will see will be mentioned. This being said, it is important to realize that the concept of state sovereignty is intrinsically linked to territory, so much that territorial sovereignty is key to statehood. In 1928, in an arbitration between the Netherlands and the United States of America about the sovereignty over the island of Palmas, which is also called Miangas and which is situated in the Pacific Ocean south of the Philippines and north of Indonesia, in that award, Max Hubert, acting as sole arbitrator in the case, famously wrote that, I quote, Sovereignty in relation to a portion of the surface of the globe is the legal condition necessary for the inclusion of such portion in the territory of any particular state. Sovereignty in relation to territory is called territorial sovereignty. Sovereignty in the relations between states signifies independence. Independence in regard to a portion of the globe is the right to exercise their reign to the exclusion of any other state, the functions of a state, end of quote. Second, a population. There is no state without a population, without human beings living on the territory of the state. Again, the size of the population does not matter, but it must not be an empty space, nor a space with wild animals only. And the population should live on the territory on a permanent basis. It can, of course, move around according to the seasons, but it must be there. It does not matter if the population has the nationality of the state or nationalities of several other states. That is another matter, and it is possible, even if it has never occurred, it is possible that a state decides not to grant its nationality to anyone. Third, an effective and independent government. By this, what is required is that the population living on the territory be socially organized, governed and represented by authorities that can effectively enforce the international obligations of the state on the territory and the population. And those authorities must be independent, that is, they must not obey orders from outside and must act in an autonomous way. Traditionally, states are free under international law to choose whatever form and nature of government they prefer. A state may choose to be a republic or a monarchy, to be a federal state, or a very centralized state. It can also choose to be a military dictatorship or a liberal democracy under traditional international law. And on that last point, international law is indeed traditionally indifferent to the nature of the political regime of the state. Moreover, international law prohibits outside interference in what are called the sacrosanths domestic affairs of a state. This being said, more and more states agree in treaties to have a democratic form of government and to respect some fundamental political freedoms. Those treaties are mostly concluded at the regional rather at the universal level. However, if such treaties have been concluded and are binding on the state concerned, it is not free anymore under international law to have an undemocratic government, while the way to govern its people is also curtailed by rules of international law. The process by which those three elements meet at a certain moment in time and that a state comes to existence, that process is essentially a factual process. Historically, states have established themselves as states because they were able to do so as a matter of fact. And this may explain why territory, population, effective and abandoned government are sometimes said to be constitutive elements of states. However, I submit that this is a misconception if by constitutive one considers that the state stops to exist as a state if one of the three elements comes to be missing. In fact, this is not the case. The state survives and does not disappear if, notably, it lacks an effective government. For instance, Germany was left without any central government after the fall of the Third Reich, but it did not disappear as a state. And closer to us, Somalia did not stop being a state despite lacking an effective government for many years. Therefore, instead of considering those three elements as constitutive of states, it is a better view to see them as criteria for the identification of states. By this, I mean that they help to identify that what we have in front of us is indeed a state, rather than something else like a tribe or an international organization. Just like the shape of leaves helps us to identify that the tree in front of us is an oak and not a chestnut. The act by which existing states officially take notice of the existence of a new state and admit it as one of their peers is called state recognition. It is a very old institution of international law and it is a decision of fundamental importance. And this is because if becoming a state is essentially a factual process, being a state on your own, without being admitted in the family of nations and considered as a state by the other states, well that is rather meaningless. The next video will deal with state recognition.