Crimea and colorable claims based on moral standing
(cont.)
Russia does not accept Ukraine and Ukraine does not accept Russia in any
negotiations about the sovereignty over Crimea.
Regardless of their rhetorical
arguments, which will only guarantee an endless dispute and legal and political
limbo for the inhabitants of the disputes territory, do these opposing parties
have any grounds for their claim? Do they have what I call a “colorable claim”
to go into negotiations?
To recapitulate, a party has a colorable claim if prima
facie they have the right to claim sovereignty, that is to say they appear
to have a probable cause to support their intended right to claim. REMINDER: a
right to claim (admissibility stage) is different from saying that they have a
right to sovereignty (substance of the case).
We
introduced last week the colorable claim in the context of Crimea based on
historical arguments and based on law. The
post today introduces the third ground for a colorable claim: moral standing.
A colourable claim and moral standing
A colorable claim is based on moral considerations
when any of the claiming parties based their right to claim sovereignty on
moral grounds. In other words, they have moral standing. That is because the
claim has to relate to the sovereignty of the third territory and the decision
that the parties will arrive at in the negotiations may make a difference,
morally, on how that party may be treated.
There is indeed a linked question to the idea of
moral standing: who counts? In general, there can be many answers, from the
narrowest by only granting certain populations participation (for example, only
human beings who fulfil a certain criteria); to the broadest (that is to say, any
human being, and hence any population may potentially have the right to claim
sovereignty anywhere).
Consider the following example: would Chile,
Slovenia or Tibetans have a right to claim sovereignty over Israel/Palestine
based on a humanitarian reason? The answer to this question depends on the
frame of reference.
The question is not about global justice or morality
but about particular sovereignty conflicts (in our case study, the dispute over
Crimea). Thereby, the moral
considerations are within this context.
In
tune with this, the above questions are indeed interlinked as well as their
answers. Although at first glance it may seem unfair for someone to share what
is supposed to be his own, the reality is that the sovereignty of exactly that
object (in the case under study, the disputed territory of Crimea and all that
this implies) is the center of the whole argument.
The
starting point is a piece of land populated by certain people whose sovereignty
is argued by several parties. These inhabitants do live there, but their right
to do so is under discussion. Precisely,
there are reasons that support the inclusion of the inhabitants in the
negotiation that go beyond that of human rights.
Indeed, they have a colorable claim. That is because
they either occupy the territory and have been there continuously (historical
entitlement) or because they have moral standing, or a combination of both.
NOTE: This post is based on Jorge Emilio Núñez,
“Territorial Disputes and State Sovereignty: International Law and Politics,”
London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2020 (forthcoming)
Previous
published research monograph about territorial disputes and sovereignty by the
author, Jorge Emilio Núñez, “Sovereignty Conflicts and International Law and
Politics: A Distributive Justice Issue,” London and New York: Routledge, Taylor
and Francis Group, 2017.
NEXT
POST: Crimea and colorable claims based on moral standing: who counts?
Monday 02nd March 2020
Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez
Twitter: @London1701
No comments:
Post a Comment