The legal case for self-determination in Kosovo

The second issue in the legal analysis of self-determination for Kosovo is a normative one which paradigm of self-determination, and consequently, which norms and rules, apply to the case of Kosovo Unlike East Timor, Kosovo does not entail a case of decolonization. Serbia was never Kosovo s colonizer Kosovo was never Serbia s colony. Rather, Kosovo was an autonomous province within a larger federal state (SFRY), and later a province within a smaller non-federal state (Serbia).Thus, Kosovo s right to self-determination will be analyzed under the non-decolonization paradigm, requiring a distinction between the exercise of internal self-determination and external self-determination. 

Kosovo s local assembly approved a declaration of self-determination, and two months later they approved a constitution which proclaimed that tt]he Republic of Kosova is a democratic state of the Albanian people and of members of other nations and national minorities. Thus, as early as 1990, Kosovar Albanians beheved that they had the right to external self-determination. 

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