There are a plethora of documents in international law that advance the right of self-determination of peoples. At the same time, they also defend the right of territorial integrity of states. The practice, however, shows that states adopt a rigid stance against any demands for self-determination that could endanger their territorial integrity. The aim of the paper is to review the definition of external self-determination and its implementation through the years. It focuses on how its meaning changed after the end of the Cold War and how the right was to be further exercised. By examining the case of Kosovo and comparing it with other cases such as Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, this paper concludes that there is still no uniform approach to the right of self-determination and that the international community continues to implement practices of ‘two double standards’.
