Habilitation project of Ass.- Prof. Dr. Benedikt Harzl

The habilitation project revolves around secessionist entities in the South Caucasus and problematizes the question to which extent they can be seen as entities in their own right. It is asserted that the current legal framework in international law and international relations theory tends to ignore the question of agency of these entities as the traditional approach is deeply rooted in addressing these secessionist entities along the territorial integrity vs. self-determination prism. However, it is submitted and will be demonstrated in this book that this very traditional prism in precisely determining the legal consequences that follows from the existence of secessionist entities is both too uncertain and imprecise as well as inadequate. It is uncertain as well as imprecise as it fails to exactly distill the normative contents of both principles in the context of secessionist entities and fails to establish precisely the conditions upon which the accomplishment of secession can and ought to be tolerated. It logically follows that the imposition of this prism is equally inadequate in dealing with these entities and redressing the underlying problem. In this regard, this book will discuss the underlying problems by reference to the three conflicts of the South Caucasus: Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia.