Carnegie Center Report: Uncertain Ground: Engaging With Europe’s De Facto States and Breakaway Territories
Abkhazia, Transdniestria, and northern Cyprus, three unrecognized statelets in Europe that arose during conflicts in the twentieth century, have endured for decades. Despite many problems, they are self-governing and stable, and they show no signs of collapsing. They exercise internal sovereignty, even as they have no prospect of getting international recognition. This qualifies them as de facto states.
While these territories still have problems of poor regulation and impunity from international justice, in many other regards, they seek respectability and try to cleave to European norms. This distinguishes them from the breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine. Concerns in the recognized states that greater engagement will lead to “creeping recognition” of the territories is not borne out by legal opinion, which concludes that recognition is a conscious act and cannot be conferred by accident.
Better engagement with breakaway territories such as these is an overlooked resource in conflict resolution. If carried out in a clear-sighted and intelligent manner, it should benefit all sides. It should give citizens of the de facto states greater opportunities to be integrated into the world. It should benefit the recognized states who generally have a de jure claim over the territories (the “parent states”) by building bridges across the conflict divide. It should have a wider benefit by ensuring that these places are more compliant with international norms.
The real goals of the de facto states are probably more modest than their declared ambitions. Most aspire less to formal independence and more to self-government within an international framework.
International actors must coordinate closely with the governments in parent states, but they also have their own intrinsic interests in resolving the conflicts. They can adopt policies from a large toolkit within a framework of nonrecognition. Engagement can be broadened in unrecognized states on a case-by-case basis to more sectors, such as education and healthcare. Cooperation with de facto authorities is controversial but inevitable. Its scope can be defined by developing new rules of engagement.
Additionally, a presence on the ground in the form of liaison offices would increase international leverage in these territories. A stronger presence could be used both to deliver more assistance and to demand commitments from the de facto authorities in the shape of cooperation on legal and criminal issues.
