Succession, Kosovo Case

Succession is a theory and practice in international relations to regulate matters relating to the inheritance of states. This theory has its roots in nineteenth-century diplomacy and has attracted the attention of scholars especially after the dissolution of colonies and federations such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia where many questions and problems arose that had to be resolved in terms of rights and obligations of the successor states to the predecessor state. The purpose of this paper was to analyse succession as a theory and practice and to review its application in the case of Kosovo. Several research methods have been used to achieve this goal. The analytical method is used to substantively analyse the key theoretical issues related to the succession process. The second method is the descriptive one, where different examples of succession conclusions are described. Through the qualitative method, the contents of the two Vienna Conventions, the 1978 Convention on the Succession of Treaties and the 1983 Convention on the Succession of States over Public Property, Archives and State Debts, have been studied in more depth. To study the succession in the case of Kosovo, two international agreements have been analysed: the 2001 agreement signed between the successor states of the SFRJ and the Comprehensive Agreement proposed by Ahtisaari in 2007 to resolve Kosovo's status. From this applied methodology, the knowledge of the object of study has been achieved. The main results of the paper are: the succession of the Kosovo case was not resolved through the 2001 Succession Agreement as Kosovo was not a republic and was signed by Serbia-Montenegro Union, Kosovo in the statement of the independence has stated that it will take over the obligations related to its name from the former SFRY together with the obligations from June 1999 to February 2008 when Kosovo was administered by UNMIK.