Quebec sovereigntists and their detractors in Quebec and the rest of Canada are weighing the significance of the International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion on Kosovo for national unity in Canada.  The Court’s advisory opinion has spurred a debate on the subject in the country’s French-language press.

Some Quebec sovereigntists saw the advisory opinion as a precedent for Quebec independence.  If Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence did not violate international law, they asserted, then the same would hold true if Quebec were to declare its intention to secede from Canada.  The Court’s opinion demonstrates that international law takes precedence over the conditions governing negotiations on the secession of Canadian provinces set out in the federal Clarity Act.  Quebec would not be acting unlawfully by declaring itself independent if the federal government refused to negotiate the terms of that independence or did so in bad faith.

Critics argued that the advisory opinion is not universally applicable, and ought to be interpreted narrowly. These critics cite the ICJ’s own advisory opinion and the statements of UN member states during the hearings to support their claim that the Kosovo opinion does not confer a universal right to declare independence unilaterally.  Indeed, for one commentator, the purpose of the decision was to reinforce the independence of Kosovo while reducing the possibility of similar declarations elsewhere in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

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