Unrecognized and Partially Recognized Entities Through the Prism of the Concept of the State in International Law

The so-called unrecognized and partially recognized States retain their status as a “grey area†of international law. In the view of the current trends in international law, and the objective reality manifest in the growing number of international ties with such entities, international law still struggles to comprehend and account for this phenomenon. This lag is characterized by the existence of a wide range of de facto legal relations that are not clearly regulated by international law, which includes bilateral and multilateral cooperation of various forms, including the treaty-based. The article discusses the defining aspects of the peripheral existence of such entities in the international system: difficulties in the economic sphere, from the point of view of ethics and human rights, combined with high political sensitivity of the issue. The author notes inconsistencies arising from the position of generally recognized criteria of the State, namely the notion of the effectiveness of territorial power as a central and distinctive characteristic of the State in the concept that was summarized by J. Crawford. The author concludes that it is promising for international lawyers to further study this phenomenon and to develop legally defined approaches and criteria with due attention to the balance of fundamental international legal principles and values .