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16 Mich. J. Int'l L. 1113 (1994-1995)
Why Redraw the Map of Africa: A Moral and Legal Inquiry

handle is hein.journals/mjil16 and id is 1123 raw text is: WHY REDRAW THE MAP OF AFRICA: A Moral and Legal Inquiry Dr. Makau wa Mutua* INTRODUCTION ................................................ 1113 I. THE COLONIAL STATE: A MORAL AND LEGAL NULLITY9 .... 1120 A. The Criteria for Statehood: A Recipe for Colonization ... 1122 B. Colonization: Problems of Law, Morality, and Process .. 1126 C. The Contrived State: The Drawing of a New Map ..... 1134 D. The Validation of the Colonial State in International Law .................................... 1137 II. FALSE STATEHOOD AND THE CRISIS OF THE POST-COLONIAL STATE ................................... 1142 IHl. THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND SELF-DETERMINATION: PROSPECTS FOR ALTERNATIVE FORMULAE ................. 1150 IV. NEW MAP-MAKING: QUESTIONS OF LAW AND POLITICS .... 1160 V. REGIONAL INTEGRATION: ANOTHER DEAD END ........... 1167 C ONCLUSION .................................................. 1175 INTRODUCTION The last decade of the twentieth century has seen a sharp increase in the number of new states, many of them a result of the end of the Cold War and the demise of European communism.' Not since decolonization have sovereignty and self-determination been such powerful currencies * Associate Director, Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School; Visiting Professor, University of Puerto Rico School of Law (Summer 1995). S.J.D. (1987), L.L.M. (1985), Harvard Law School; L.L.M. (1984), L.L.B. (1983), University of Dar-es-salaam. The author wishes to thank Athena Mutua, James Gathii, Susan Ruth Marks, Henry Richardson III, Henry Steiner, John Witte, Jr., and Joe Oloka-Onyango for their valuable comments. The author dedicates this article to his late parents, Rose Ndui Mutua and Joseph Mutua, whose lives were needlessly and prematurely lost in December 1992. Without them, the author would not have been free, nor would he have understood the meaning of freedom. 1. The break-up of the Soviet Union, for example, created fifteen separate, independent, and sovereign states: Armenia, Azerbaydzhan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. East Germany was absorbed by West Germany. In a first for post-colonial Africa, Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia and in 1993 became an independent state. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia and Montenegro, or what is sometimes referred to as rump Yugoslavia, have arisen from the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. For a journalistic account of the recent creation of ministates through the break-up of larger entities, see Russell W. Howe, Countries are Breaking into Ministates and That's Not Necessarily Bad, BALTIMORE SUN, Jan. 23, 1994, at E8. 1113

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