Volume 12 Issue 1 2011
CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS
62
O
Undoubtedly, a stable Southern Caucasus will be an optimal environment for ensuring the de-
pendable delivery of Caspian energy resources to Western markets. Moreover, the United States has
great stakes in the region and in the Caspian oil business which obligate Washington to secure peace
and stability in the region.
ABKHAZIA,
KOSOVO AND
THE RIGHT TO EXTERNAL
SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES
Marco SIDDI
Marie Curie Research Fellow and
Ph.D. candidate at the School of Social and
Political Science,
University of Edinburgh
(Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
I n t r o d u c t i o n
policies in South Ossetia and the existence of sim-
ilar plans for Abkhazia.
1
Therefore, in the August 2008 crisis Russia
supported the controversial principle of external
self-determination of peoples in exceptional cir-
cumstances, which it had fiercely opposed until
then, most notably in the case of Kosovo’s decla-
ration of independence. External self determina-
tion implies “the right of every people to choose
the sovereignty under which they live”. The con-
cept of external self-determination is broader than
that of internal self-determination, which refers
primarily to “the right of peoples to select their
own form of government” within a sovereign
n 26 August, 2008 the Russian Federation
recognized the independence of Georgia’s
breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia. In the statement that explained the
reasons for Russia’s recognition, President Dmitry
Medvedev referred to the “freely expressed will
of the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples” and to sev-
eral fundamental international instruments that
stress inter alia the principle of self-determination
of peoples, notably the U.N. Charter, the 1970
U.N. General Assembly Declaration on Principles
of International Law Concerning Friendly Rela-
tions and Cooperation among States (U.N. Gen-
eral Assembly Resolution 2625) and the 1975
Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Medvedev
also specified that Abkhazians and South Osse-
tians had the right to decide their destiny by them-
selves in the light of Georgia’s allegedly genocidal
1
See: “Medvedev’s Statement on South Ossetia and
Abkhazia,”
The New York Times, 27 August, 2008, availa-
ble at [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/world/europe/
27iht-27medvedev.15660953.html], 31 January, 2011.
