4 ELEMENTS OF STATE

by

Phatsakone Chanhchom

on March 9th, 2010

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Following the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of states which was a
treaty signed at Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 26th, 1933.The state as a
person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a
permanent population (people); (b) a defined territory; (c) government (political
authority); and(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states (diplomat
recognition or sovereignty).

A PERMANENT POPULATION

A state is an organization of human beings living together as a community. The

population of astate comprises all individuals who, in principle, inhabit the territory
in a permanent way. It mayconsist of nationals and foreigners. As has repeatedly
been pointed out by doctrine, therequirement of a population is not necessarily an
equivalent of the requirement of nationality.The population of a state need not be
completely homogeneous in culture, language, race or otherwise. Indeed, it is even
rare, except for Micro-States, to find a State with a homogeneous people.
International law does not require a minimum number of inhabitants constituting a
State.The smallest number of nationals in a Micro-State can be found in Nauru and
in Monaco. Thisfigure can be even lower if we take into account that theoretically
Pitcairn with 52 inhabitantshas the right to opt for statehood by virtue of its right to
self-determination. No reservations have been made by the international community
with respect to statehood because of the limitednumber of nationals of Micro-
States, even if the nationals were outnumbered by foreignresidents.

A DEFINED TERRITORY

The functions of a State, a political and legal community of human beings, must first
of all beexercised in a given territory.Territory is a geographical area that is owned
and controlled by a government or country toexercise such state sovereignty.
Therefore, most of legal professors give and conclude the definition of the territory
that territoryclearly comprises and refers to land territory which belongs to state
and individuals, internalwaters and territorial sea (straits) which state claims for
sovereignty, and the airspace above thisterritory.It is required that the State must
consist of a certain coherent territory effectively governed andthe territory of a
State need not be exactly fixed by definite frontiers.A defined geographical area
the existence of Micro-State with minimum land territory such asMonaco (1.95
square kilometer), and the Vatican City (0.44 square kilometer) leads to
theconclusion that no minimum size is required for the territory, as this element was
never a reasonfor denying statehood.

GOVERNMENT

The government is the executive branch of the state and has the role to administer
the stateuniformly in the following aspects: political, economic, social, cultural, use
of natural resources,environmental protection, national defense and security, and
foreign affairs.Form of state is defined depending on the constitution drafted,
generally structure of state can bedivided into: unitary state and federal state, this
probably affects the government in exercisinglimit on its power.

SOVEREIGNTY

Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory.

It can befound in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for
which no purely legalexplanation can be provided. The definition of the
Sovereignty is quite similar to theIndependence and they mostly used along
together.

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