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United States of America in 1822 has been described as ‘the greatest assistance rendered by any
foreign power to the independence of Latin America.’ The recognition by India, a significant
regional power, of Bangladesh in 1971 was a key to the success of the latter’s secession from
Pakistan. Conversely, the failure to gain international recognition has been a major contributing
factor to the failure of various secessions. This is confirmed by the failure of the southern
Confederacy to gain British recognition of its secession from the US in the 1860s, and Katanga’s
failed secession from Congo in the 1960s. The fact that only Turkey has recognised the 1983
secession of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus means that the latter’s secession has not, at
least to date, been successful.
In relation to a unilateral secession by Quebec the recognition of the four former republics of
Yugoslavia serves as an instructive precedent. International recognition was extended to the
republics despite the unilateral acts of secession being declared unconstitutional by Yugoslavia’s
Constitutional Court. Recognition was justified, in part, on allegations of intransigence on the part
of Serbia and, to a lesser extent, Montenegro, who sought to retain parts of the territory of the
seceding republics within what remained of Yugoslavia.
CONCLUSION
The domestic constitutional law of the three federal States of the United States, the former
Yugoslavia and Canada, indicates some common themes as to the right of secession. Although the
United States Supreme Court declared that the American union is indestructible, the decision in
Texas v White is, in its essence, very much the same in effect as the various decisions of the
Yugoslav Constitutional Court and the Canadian Supreme Court in Secession Reference. That
essence is that a unilateral secession of a federal unit is constitutionally illegal. Undoubtedly the
tenor of Texas v White is more strongly anti-secessionist than is the case with the decisions in
Yugoslavia and Canada. All three cases indicate, in varying degrees of detail, that the agreement
of other federal units is necessary for secession to occur. Their agreement is required largely
because secession is not merely a concern of the federal unit that wishes to secede but also a
concern of other units in the State and it is this concern that largely underpins the prohibition of
unilateral secession pursuant to a State’s constitutional law. A consequence of this, as is suggested
in the cases decided in the former Yugoslavia and Canada, is that, even if secession is agreed upon
in the manner required, it may need to be on terms that the seceding federal unit be partitioned so
that territory populated by groups within the republic opposed to secession could remain within
the parent State.