Evaluating UN Practice in the Settlement of Identity-Based Territorial Conflicts with a View on the Cyprus, Karabakh and Kosovo Cases

The conflicts between minority groups and the central government are considered to be one of the current threats to international peace and security. Employing the descriptive-analytical method and studying three cases of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh and Kosovo, this paper seeks to analyze the performance of UN in settling the identity-based territorial conflicts. The authors believe that the reason behind the failure of UN in settlement of Cyprus and Karabakh crises is that the Security Council has always supported the rights of Cyprus and Azerbaijan to maintain their territorial integrity without mentioning the possibility of the realization of right to remedial secession. In fact, the Council has always given an unconditional guarantee to central governments and thereby has lost its pressure tool on these states to grant appropriate privileges to secessionist groups in order to persuade them to abandon their secessionist demands. On the contrary, through implicit recognition of remedial secession as the last resort and after the deadlock of negotiations, this organization has had a relatively successful performance in Kosovo problem and impeded the continuation of an endless crisis. It appears that the report-card of this Organization in this regard is neither black nor white; it is grey and this leaves us in a world of fears and hopes.