Right to self-determination: Will African state referendum influence Karabakh recognition?

Sudan is holding a referendum that will admittedly reaffirm the aspiration of the southern Christian minority of the country to live separately from the Muslim north -- another example of creating a new state based on the right of part of the population to self-determination.

Experts were quick to draw parallels between Sudan and Nagorno-Karabakh, which declared its independence from Azerbaijan in December 1991 and held an appropriate referendum. There were reports that Karabakh would be "next" in the list of states to be recognized.

(Serbian breakaway republic Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence in February 2008 and it has already been recognized by dozens of states. Also, a number of Latin American countries have recognized the state of Palestine as independent from Israel lately).

Karabakh presidential spokesman David Babayan believes that "processes are taking place all over the world and these processes create favorable conditions for the resolution of the Karabakh conflict and the recognition of its independence."

"Since 2009, Azerbaijan has increased 567 times its trade with the unrecognized state of Taiwan, and this suggests that in today's world there is a tendency that the formation of new states and their recognition is becoming real and tangible," said Babayan.

Chairman of the NKR Public Council on Foreign Policy and Security Masis Mayilyan believes that the referendum in Southern Sudan cannot have the value of a precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh, since the referendum in this African country is held with the consent of the center - Khartoum. Over the past 20 years, other countries would also gain independence that way, namely Eritrea became independent from Ethiopia and East Timor from Indonesia.

"Since the Azerbaijani Republic continues to deny the NKR people the right to self-determination and free development, then for Karabakh the precedents of recognition are those of Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose partial international recognition took place against the will of the former centers. As regards a referendum as a procedure for self-determination, then this democratic mechanism was successfully applied in the NKR as far back as December 1991. Therefore, what Karabakh needs is not a new referendum, but the international recognition of the results of the already stated will of its people," said Mayilyan.

Ilya Galinsky, an expert from Transnistria, a breakaway Moldovan region, believes that the international community uses a dual approach to recognition of the right to self-determination. He says while the Western community has recognized Kosovo and welcomes the referendum in Sudan, based on its interests it refuses to recognize Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdniestria, which also declared their independence.

"The right to self-determination and the formation of an independent state, as enshrined in the founding documents of the UN, must have a permanent, genuine right, regardless of the will or unwillingness of one political state player or another," said the expert.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that at the first meeting of U.S. Congress of the 112th convocation among the main issues will be issues of the Karabakh conflict, energy sector development in Azerbaijan, Armenia's economic development and the restoration of Georgia after the military intervention of Russia in 2008. It is regarded by experts as U.S. interest in a speedy resolution of the Karabakh conflict and laying of regional communications.