The Ilemi Triangle 'Sovereigntyscape' (Part Two)

This article, available here, considers the Ilemi Triangle with reference to James Sidaway's (2003) notion of 'sovereigntyscapes'. It does so in order to consider Ilemi as a product of a variety of interactions - the global demand for oil, histories of violence and imperialism, and the geopolitics of the cold war and beyond - rather than as simply an example of a 'weak' or 'failed' African sovereignty. On this view, the Triangle is arguably not merely emblematic of particular deficiencies of an African sovereignty (vis-à-vis a 'western' counterpart) but, rather, a product of sovereign excesses, including those that have emanated from far beyond the Triangle itself.
Read the full article here:

The Sudanese Referendum: Secession and the Challenges to Peace

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended the war between the Government of Sudan and the forces that had coalesced around the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. the CPA afforded Southern Sudan the right to an exercise of self-determination and set up the semi-autonomous South Sudan, the entity that, after the referendum scheduled for 9 January 2011, may emerge as the first new independent African state in Africa since 1993.

In all likelihood, the people of South Sudan will vote for independence in January. This outcome will itself not be without problems and yet there is still the potential that the referendum could be delayed or otherwise disrupted. This carries the very real potential for the expiry of the CPA and, with it, the compromising of the basis that exists for the interaction and dialogue between the North and South.

Menas Borders' article considers the problems that attend the issue of South Sudan's potential secession and it can be read here.

Territorial integrity in the archives: the contingency of territorial geopolitics?

The territorial integrity principle enjoys a central position in the international legal doctrine. It articulates a guarantee of states' exclusive territoriality, orients the modern international system around state sovereignty and seeks to derive order from territorial fixity. In this system territorial borders may only be changed by the consent of the states concerned and, moreover, a 'classical' view of borders has been superseded through the adoption of territorial integrity as the norms of international society have been globalised.

But there is nothing essential or timelessly 'true' about the territorial integrity principle even if it is often depicted in those terms. Its current centrality to international order is dependent on a 'good fit' with a particular geopolitical vision. While its roots can certainly be discerned much earlier, it was after 1945 and within the context of an American-sponsored geopolitical order, that territorial integrity became a structuring principle. This marked a stage in a process that had not been uncontested. In this article, consideration of archival material allows for the illustration of the way in which one of the US' closest partners, the UK, considered organising collective security around a guarantee of territorial integrity to be undesirable. While it is impossible to say how an alternative vision would have structured international affairs in the post-World War II world, it is still intriguing to consider the motivations of the UK government in resisting the implementation of a guarantee that became so central to the preservation of order in the post-1945 world.

Read the full article here.