Comments on International Legal Aspects of the Crimean Question in the UN
Abstract
The article analyses three main elements of the Crimean question which are
directly connected with the UN Charter as discussed and voted on in the
Security Council and in the General Assembly, namely the problems of the
self-determination requested by the Crimean population, the unilateral
modification of the internationally recognized border between Ukraine and
Russia and the veto put by Russia on the vote on a draft resolution
declaring the invalidity of a referendum organized in Crimea in March 2014.
Despite the fact that international law does exceptionally tolerate secession
as a form of self-determination, the secession of Crimea did not satisfy the
necessary international legal conditions for accepting a secession.
International law does not allow a unilateral modification of an
international border between two existing states, but nevertheless, that is
what happened in Crimea. Finally, Russia vetoed the above mentioned draft
resolution in spite of Article 27 [3] of the Charter, which requires the parties
to a dispute, when they are members of the Security Council, to abstain
from voting in the Council on their dispute. The draft resolution on Crimea
has to be considered as applying Chapter VI of the Charter, with Russia
being a party to a dispute on the status of Crimea with Ukraine. Therefore,
Russia had no right to vote on the draft,
Keywords
United Nations, Security Council, veto of a permanent member, self-determination, internationally recognized State border, State successsion
Author Biography
Jiří Malenovský
Jiří Malenovský, born in 1950, he graduated from the Law Faculty of Masaryk University of Brno (1974), where he also worked as an assistant and an assistant
professor of the Department of International Law (1974-1990). He became
an associate professor (1990) and a Professor of International Law (2001) at
the Law Faculty of Masaryk University in Brno. He has had a rich career as a
judge and diplomat. He served as a judge of the Constitutional Court of
Czechoslovakia (1992) and a judge of the Constitutional Court of the Czech
Republic (2000-2004). As a Permanent Representative (Ambassador) he
represented the Czech Republic at the Council of Europe (1993-1998), and
then he worked as a Senior Director of the Legal and Consular Service of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic (1998-2000). Since
2004, he is a judge at the Court of Justice of the EU. In his professional
activities and publications he specializes in international public law.