Recognition of States in International Law

Pavle Kilibarda is a researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva. He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Geneva, an LLM from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and a BA in International Relations from the University of Belgrade. He is currently engaged with the University of Geneva Counter-Terror Pro LegEm project, which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Previously, he has worked at the Geneva Academy, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, and has taught international law for the universities of Boston and Santa Clara.

• 1: Introduction 2: Recognition as a Legal Act 3: Types of Recognition 4: Non-Recognition 5: States in International Law 6: The Legal Personality of States 7: Recognition in Treaties, Jurisprudence, and Practice 8: Theories of Recognition 9: When Recognition is Declaratory 10: When Recognition is Constitutive 11: Statehood Beyond Recognition 12: Withdrawal of Recognition 13: Concluding Remarks

Dr Kilibarda has succeeded, with uncommon brilliance, in producing another treatise on age-old questions of recognition and statehood, yet a one that strikes us as so different, original, fine, and innovative. What makes it so powerful is the tight counterpoint, set in a dense and flawless analytical style, through which it lays out its key messages. Recasting statehood as a multitude of legal relations sometimes arising from recognition and sometimes from objective norms of international law, the work acknowledges the relativism in which the act remains embedded, reflecting the spirit of the international legal order as a whole. A new mixed theory of great subtlety and legal power thus emerges before the eyes of the reader.