 If the emergence on the world stage of a new state results from a concerted and negotiated process with the mother state, the rest of the world will usually feel reassured and will not contest such outcome. State recognition will easily be granted. And for instance, South Sudan declared its independence in 2011 following an internationally monitored referendum that had been agreed after a lengthy and bloody civil war. South Sudan was easily and quickly recognized as a state. However, and throughout history, many new states came to exist as a result of unilateral acts of secession. The question often asked in that regard is to know whether international law prohibits unilateral secessions. And of course, if unilateral secessions are illegal as such under international law, then the obligation not to recognize should apply and the new entity that pretends to be a state should not be recognized as a state. However, traditionally, international law has remained silent on the matter. While unilateral secession is usually unconstitutional under domestic law, international law does not provide for any rule prohibiting unilateral secession as such and as a matter of principle. In other words, per se, secession is not prohibited under general international law. And that may sound strange to you. And you may think that because international law protects the territorial integrity of states and notably under article 2 paragraph 4 of the UN Charter that we shall study later in the course, because of the rule protecting territorial integrity, you may think that unilateral secession is illegal as it undoubtedly alters the territorial integrity of state. However, as the International Court of Justice made clear in an advisory opinion about the conformity with international law of the unilateral declaration of independence in respect of Kosovo, as the court made clear, I quote, the scope of the principle of territorial integrity is confined to the sphere of relations between states, end of quote, that is between already existing states. One must therefore understand that at the very moment when secession occurs through a unilateral declaration of independence, the entity which is about to pretend to become a state is not yet bound by the duty owed by states vis-à-vis each other, the duty to respect their respective territorial integrity. Such duty becomes binding on the new state once it has become a state, just a second as it were, after its declaration of independence and provided, of course, that the outcome of such declaration is successful and that a new state effectively results from it. Well, this may sound fairly artificial to you and fairly formal, but if international law were to radically prohibit secession, it would simply mean that history is forever written in advance, as the establishment of any new state would be contrary to international law and could not be recognized by other states. Then the composition of the international community of states would be frozen forever. The power of existing states on their people would be considerably reinforced because the creation of any new state would need to be concerted, which would amount to giving to the mother state an unlimited veto to the emergence of a new state on a portion of its territory. And this may be the case as a matter of domestic law, but this is not the case as a matter of international law. So while the absence of a radical prohibition of unilateral secession under international law might be an element, of course, of instability in international relations, it does make some sense and it is actually not without some moral foundation. Well, this does not mean, however, that unilateral secessions are always in conformity with international law. And as the court made clear in the same advisory opinion, there are indeed cases where the unilateral secession stems from other grave breaches of international law, like an illegal use of force by another state helping the secession, and that was the case of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, or the violation of the right of colonial people to self-determination, and that was the case in the situation in Southern Rhodesia, or grave breaches, grave crimes resulting in an ethnic cleansing. And that was the case in relation to the declaration of independence of the Republic of Serbska by the Bosnian Serbs during the war in Bosnia. In all those cases, unilateral secession is the result of grave breaches. In other words, secession would not have existed without those breaches, and therefore the unilateral secession constitutes an illegal situation to which the obligation not to recognize applies. And this is precisely why the Security Council condemned as illegal the situations I just mentioned and requested from the UN member states that they do not recognize such situations as such and the entities as states. But that practice by the Security Council does not create a rule prohibiting unilateral secessions as such. Let us turn now to the text of the advisory opinion by the court on those various points.