Who gets to have their own country?

Kurdistan and Catalonia are both in the process of holding independence referendums but Spain and Iraq say they will not respect the results.

I happened across this short BBC World radio documentary looking into the issue. They ask the question, who gets to have their own country?

Since the United Nations created the concept of self-determination the number of independent states in the world has quadrupled. However, most of these states were ex-colonies who used self-determination to break free from European powers. The concept of self-determination becomes more legally problematic when applied to the breaking up of existing states like Spain and the UK.

The documentary suggests that Catalonia and Kurdistan can declare independence but may have issues being recognised as states by other countries. This would be less of an issue for Scotland unless we went down the UDI route as, if Scotland became independent it would likely be via a UK agreed referendum.

Have a listen and let us know what you think below.

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Who gets to have their own country? From The Inquiry on BBC World.