 When a new entity pretends to be a state because it meets the three criteria for status, other existing states may decide to recognize it as a state. State recognition can be used when a new state appears on the world stage. But if used, it can be used only once in relation to the entity concerned. State recognition is a single bullet gun. State recognition is a discretionary act in the sense that there is no obligation or duty to recognize a new state as a state. However, there might be cases where recognition is prohibited, and we shall turn to that after the video. State recognition is discretionary also in the sense that it can be done whenever the state recognizing sees it fit. The state recognizing the new state may also condition its recognition on certain political concessions or commitments that the new state is called to do. State recognition is a discretionary act that is most often explicit and made public by an official declaration. Sometimes the word recognition is not used, and sometimes recognition tacitly results from other acts. However, one has to be extremely careful in that regard. For instance, contracting a treaty with a state does not necessarily mean nor imply that the two states recognize each other. The only act which necessarily entails tacit and mutual recognition is the establishment of diplomatic relations between those two states. Finally, state recognition remains fundamentally a unilateral act from one state vis-à-vis another state. Several states may of course decide to consult each other and to proceed in a concerted way before each of them recognizes the new state. But this does not make state recognition a collective act, and there is no collective body or organ entrusted with the power to recognize new states. Well, notably when a state is admitted as member of the United Nations, it does not mean that all the UN member states recognize that new member as a state. State recognition does not result from being admitted to the UN. Moreover, even voting in favor of the admission of a new member state does not necessarily tacitly mean recognizing it as a state. And sometimes diplomacy leads to some rather surreal situations. Well, for instance, in November 2012, the UN General Assembly accorded what is called the non-member observer state status to Palestine, a status by which one does not become a member of the UN, but by which which nevertheless requires to be a state. Well, when voting in favor of such status, many states declared that their vote did not mean that they recognize Palestine as a state, even if the status of non-member can only be afforded to entities considered to be states. Usually state recognition is said to be declaratory. It simply declares that the entity being recognized is a state without having the effect of creating that state as a factual entity or constituting its international legal personality. In other words, state recognition has no specific legal effect and is therefore a political rather than a juridical act. However, such act has a great importance in international relations and it is never done lightly. Moreover, the more one state is recognized, the more it will enjoy some international effectivity, such effectivity enhancing the factual reality that the new state must be in order to be recognized. In other words, there can be a sort of chicken and egg situation when the state being recognized is somehow frail. Of course, in order to be recognized, the entity should be a new and already existing state. But being recognized will gradually reinforce, as a matter of fact, its status as a state. Recognition will not make statehood, because the latter must precede it, but it will nevertheless consolidate statehood. For that reason, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that recognition also entails some constitutive effect. But as I just said, recognition is not constitutive of the recognized state as a state. However, recognition is nevertheless constitutive in the sense that it establishes a relationship between the state recognizing the new entity and the recognized entity as a state, a relation that exists between them too and that is proper to both of them. If you see an entity being recognized as a state by some states, while other states refuse to recognize it as such, you may ask yourself, well, what is that entity at the end of the day? Is it a state or is it not a state? And the answer, I'm sorry, to that question is, well, it depends. Sometimes, even the states who refuse to recognize an entity as a state will easily concede that it is, and very much so, a state. And if that is the case, refusing to recognize is not a way to deny the factual existence of the entity as a state. The fact is a fact, but it will be a way to deny its political legitimacy. For instance, Arab states who still refuse to recognize Israel today know very well that Israel is a state and a mighty one, and it would be foolish not to see that. In other cases, when the factual existence of the state is more questionable, the constitutive dimension of recognition comes into play. As recognition establishes a relationship between the recognizing state and the entity being recognized as a state, statehood will exist for the purpose of that relationship. In such a case, and despite being primarily a factual and objective issue, in such a case, statehood could therefore boil down to a relative issue based on subjective appraisals. And this is puzzling and disconforting when it happens, but this is the price to be paid in a decentralized system of states where each of them is entrusted with the discretionary power to recognize or not new states. For the rest, time and time only will tell if the factual reality of statehood is consolidated or if it remains doubtful.