The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States
The standard definition of a State under international law was established in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States agreement signed at Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 26, 1933 (and entered into force in 1934). The Convention, adopted by the Seventh International Conference of American States and now a source of customary international law is based on Article 38.1(b) of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Statute. Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention stipulates that a State as a person in international law should possess the following qualifications; a) a permanent population, b) defined territorial boundaries, c) a government, and d) an ability to enter into agreements with other states.
An important provision of the convention was that signatories would not intervene in the domestic or foreign affairs of another sovereign State; territorial gains made by force would not be recognized, and that all disputes should be settled peacefully. The agreement was signed by the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Bolivia was the only country attending the conference that refused to sign the agreement.
Mirroring the Montevideo Convention, The United States Department of State, wrote in 1976:
In [judging whether to recognize an entity as a state], the United States has traditionally looked to the establishment of certain facts. These facts include effective control over a clearly defined territory and population; an organized governmental administration of that territory; and a capacity to act effectively to conduct foreign relations and to fulfill international obligations.1
The difficulty is defining Statehood in a neat, concise way as entities break up, shift, change or declare Statehood before criteria are met. The dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the consequent conflict and war over the disintegration of Yugoslavia illustrates how complex the process can become. Similarly, the unwillingness of the international community to fully recognize Palestinian Statehood amidst intractable conflict and the inability to reach a viable negotiated settlement, has highlighted the issue of security in the state building process.
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