World Court Digest

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II.	Substantive International Law - Second Part
5.	SELF-DETERMINATION

¤ Application of the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
(Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia),
Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 11 July 1996,
I.C.J. Reports 1996, p. 595

[p. 752 D.O. Kreca] 87. The proclamation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a "sovereign and independent state" constitutes, in my view, a substantial breach of the cogent norm on equal rights and self-determination of peoples in both the formal and material sense.

A substantial breach in the formal sense is reflected in the following:

(a) the procedure of proclamation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was conducted in an unconstitutional way, contrary to the relevant provisions of its own Constitution and that of the SFRY;

(b) self-determination in the subject case was de facto conceived as a right of a territory within a sovereign, independent State, rather than as a right of peoples.

The breach of the norm on equal rights and self-determination of peoples in a material sense is reflected in the following:

(a) the proclamation of independence of a federal unit of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in violation of relevant provisions of the internal law of the SFRY and of Bosnia and Herzegovina, endangered the territorial integrity and political unity of SFRY, in contravention of the provision of paragraph 7 of the Declaration on Principles;

(b) the proclamation of the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina within its administrative borders was not based on the equal rights and self-determination of all three peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Therefore, the proclamation of the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina was not in conformity with the relevant principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and territorial integrity and political unity and, as such, has no merit for lawful succession in terms of the succession of Bosnia and Herzegovina with respect to the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

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