Secession, International Law, and Human Rights

Is secessionSecession a human rightsRightshuman issue, and if so, what principles should the international communityCommunity adopt to address secessionist movements? It is clear that human rightsRights issues often arise in connection with secessionist movements. Consider, for example, the human rightsRights abuses that have occurred in Darfur and South Sudan as a result of secessionist movements in those regions. These of course contrast sharply with the peaceful 2014 vote on Scottish secessionSecession. A peaceful vote on the issue, I will argue, is a human rightsRightshuman success. Human rightsRightshuman issues arise as a result of secessionist movements that yield violenceViolence, and human rightsRights issues arise as a question about the conditions under which a group of persons may justifiably seek to secede from an existing political unit.