(Tablet) Eugene Kontorovich - What does international law say about the demand to remove settlers as part of a solution to a territorial conflict? There is simply no support in international practice for the expulsion of settlers from occupied territories. When East Timor received independence in an internationally-approved process, none of the Indonesian settlers were required to leave. The current UN-mediated peace plan for Western Sahara and Cyprus presupposes that the demographically dominant settler population can remain. The Cambodian demand for the mass removal of nearly a million ethnic Vietnamese was rejected outright by diplomats. In short, there is simply no precedent in international practice for such a demand. The writer is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law.
2016-09-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive