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This chapter examines the right to self-determination of the peoples of Yugoslavia. The Constitution of the Socialist Federalist Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) limited “the right to self-determination, including secession” to six Yugoslav constituent peoples/nations: Slovenes, Croats, Muslims, Serbs, Montenegrins, and Macedonians. Yugoslav “nationalities”, the largest of which were the Albanians, did not enjoy the constitutional right to self-determination, including the right to secession (to be effected by means of constitutional amendments).

This chapter examines the criteria of identifying jus cogens, in particular whether structural or substantive method should be preferred, and also the moral basis of jus cogens. Particular jus cogens norms are then examined in the field of jus ad bellum, right to self-determination, human rights, humanitarian law, and environmental law.

Chapter 5 moves beyond the two most politically consequential understandings of the right to self-determination: attributed to Demos and Ethnos respectively. While normative theorists are not sure how to evoke these figures, this chapter treats them as ensembles that are extracted from Nephos; an even fuzzier and more granular political ‘aerosol’. Against it as a backdrop, the discrete locations of territorial rights will also appear more fuzzified—not as identifiable locations, but rather as Scopos; visual effects of concealed, but nevertheless contestable scopic regimes. Once its holders and objects appear in that light, otherwise incommensurable accounts of the right to self-determination will reveal a denominator they secretly share: a Kelsenian ‘tendency’—an aspiration to increase the degree of constituent attachments across the entirety of the spacetime of a constitutional order whose legitimacy is put in question by a demand for ‘self-determination’.

Chapter 5 confronted the imagination of the right to self-determination in international law. It focused on the ways in which interpretations of that right hinge on jurists’ implicit cartographies, their scopic regimes, affective predilections, disciplinary self-images, concealed calculi of suffering, visions of alternative universes, false binaries, and their idiosyncratic levels of (im)patience and anxiety, which—together with their quasi-nationalistic professional commitments and dreams of disciplinary sovereignty—remain some of the main factors that determine how international lawyers interpret the national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political autonomy of everyone else. After having proposed a number of new ways of looking at the claims of the right to self-determination, Chapter 6 ends on a sobering note: as long as jurists remain preoccupied with their own disciplinary self-determination and ‘linguistic’ purity, they will continue reproducing the flat, monochromatic, and vacuous imaginary of popular sovereignty.

This chapter deals with policy measures needed for breaking the conflict trap in the NER. A four-fold measure has been suggested. First, promotion of economic development of the NER through cross-border development cooperation as the dynamics of national development framework has failed to address the issue, and breaking the physical isolation of the region by transforming itself from being landlocked to landlinked is only possible through cross-border cooperation. Second, improving the governance by way of adopting federal solution to separatist and secessionist demands and practising the politics of accommodation rather than politics of exclusion. Third, as the sphere of operation of the militant movements transcend the territorial boundary of the nation states; it is, thus, important to engage the neighbouring nations for preventing violence. Fourth, the nation states have to work together to redefine the concept of ‘right to self-determination’ to mean ‘right to self-governance’ rather than ‘right to political independence’.

This chapter discusses the conflict in Western Sahara and argues that the nature of this dispute is unique and hard to compare with the developments in the CIS states. Before mentioning the fundamental differences to the situation in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, it analyses the legal status of Western Sahara, works out the differences of the right to self-determination, secession, and autonomy and gives an overview of the historical background of this conflict. The Western Sahara is a case of decolonization in an otherwise predominantly autonomist and secessionist era and thus no conclusion can be drawn concerning the right to self-determination for the CIS states. Finally, the question of using natural resources will be discussed, since it is an ongoing problem.

Peter Jones argues that human rights can address violations of the determination principle, but cannot address violations of the selfhood principle. In this commentary, it is argued that international human rights norms should address both violations, for two key reasons. First, these violations are continuous in their underlying ideologies and in their effects on those whose rights to self-determination are denied. Second, international law was itself complicit in creating both categories of violations, and so has a special responsibility to correct them.

International human rights instruments establish both a fundamental right to collective self-determination and a right of individuals to free movement. What principles and priorities should guide us when these two sets of claims come into conflict? When and under what conditions are political communities morally entitled to exclude those who wish to enter? And when, on the other side, do the rights of individuals seeking entry take priority? These issues are both philosophically contested and of great practical import, and this chapter seeks to illuminate them.

The afterlife of The Hijaz) statehood and the right of self-determination) this chapter calls for finding the lost space in Islamic governance and advocates for an inclusive form of statehood. The policy proposal is that The Hijaz become the fountainhead of Islamic governance and organization, in this way reinventing relations between Islam with Saudi Arabia. The book does not in any way advocates a caliphate. The conclusion suggests the development of a soft form regionalism which considers Islamic norms and does not merely seek to replicate western structures. The book concludes with an emphasis of the potential for The Hijaz to have an integrative value at multiple levels; for (i) its own benefit and that of Saudi Arabia; (ii) the benefit of the Arab world; (iii) the benefit of the Islamic world (including Iran); (iv) the development of a global relationship and world relations between Islamic states, Muslim constituencies and the rest of the world and finally; (iv) the heritage of all mankind, being the focal point for almost a quarter of the world’s population and the logical starting place in which the West, Islam and the Middle East can remedy and rebuild their encounters.