The Proportionality Between the Principle of the Continuity of States and the Illegal Annexation of Territory from the Perspective of International Law(Looking at the accession of the Baltic countries)

Ghadir, Mohsen; Jafari, Shaho

doi:10.48300/jlr.2025.490178.2807

The Proportionality Between the Principle of the Continuity of States and the Illegal Annexation of Territory from the Perspective of International Law(Looking at the accession of the Baltic countries)

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mohsen Ghadir ¹

Shaho Jafari ²

¹ Assistant Professor, Department of International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.

² PhD student in International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.

10.48300/jlr.2025.490178.2807

Abstract

The annexation of territory is one of the issues that is less discussed in international law . Therefore, countries both before and after the United Nations era sometimes had dreams of land expansion and development in mind, and even in the current century, such cases have been carried out in areas of Ukraine, northern Syria, and Palestinian lands. The question that is addressed in this research is whether the personality of the state of the annexed territory disappears with the annexation of the territory, or does the personality of that state continue to exist? , we will achieve this since forced and coercive annexation is prohibited in modern international law. Therefore, based on the principle of prohibition of resorting to force and the principle of the continuity of governments, it is not possible to assume the extinction of the legal personality of the government. However, regarding the legal annexation that is allowed under the circumstances, it can be considered that the personality of the annexed state is deteriorating in whole or in a part of the annexed territory. However, due to the fact that the recognition of legal and forced annexation in practice is faced with challenges in some cases, therefore, the cases must be examined on a case-by-case basis, including the example of the accession of the Baltic countries, which by examining it case-by-case, rules are extracted in this regard.

Keywords

annexation of land

prohibition of aggression

Continuity of states

acquisition of Territory

international law