(2018) 2 African Human Rights Yearbook 53 inhabitants of the borderland,17 it cannot be used to further larger territorial claims in defiance of internationally accepted boundaries. Examples of such impermissible claims are the former claims of Libya to the Aouzou strip, of Nigeria to the Bakassi Peninsula, of Somalia to Djibouti and Northeast Kenya, of Morocco to Mauritania and currently to the Western Sahara, and of République du Cameroun to the former Southern British Cameroons. Secession is a pure fact situation, a meta-juridical phenomenon. The international community may acknowledge it as a matter of realism when made effective. International law deals with decolonisation but not with secession. It neither concedes nor denies a right to secede.18 It imposes no general prohibition of secession, which does not necessarily mean there is a right of secession. The nearest thing to prohibition of secession is the conditional protection of state territory available under the principle of territorial integrity. Secession disrupts the Westphalia state system. State expansionism revives imperialism, which had long been rejected because it also imperils the Westphalia state system.19 The object of the principle of territorial integrity is therefore to secure respect for the preservation of the territorial status quo of states. International law does not encourage secession, or even unions. It rejects annexation and territorial aggrandisement as invalid and inimical to international peace and security. Yet, international law cannot prevent state fission any more than it can prevent consensual fusion. The basic argument against the applicability of self-determination within sovereign states leading to secession20 is that it would conflict with and be contrary to the principle of territorial integrity. Secession and territorial integrity appear to be conflicting norms. In reality, that is not always the case. Where secession is legitimate, a new state emerging from an existing one through self-determination, there is only an apparent conflict between both norms. Furthermore, a state may suffer part of its territory to secede. The breach of the principle of territory integrity in that case is not contrary to international law. The practice of the UN and its members in the matter of secession has been inconsistent. In Africa, anti-secession rhetoric is often repeated and the principle of territorial integrity is usually proclaimed. But neither the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Charter nor the AU Constitutive Act condemn nor proscribes secession in any member state. They do not because that would be interfering in the internal affairs of a member state. None of those documents exclude a legitimate 17 18 19 20 M Weller Autonomy, self-determination and conflict resolution (2007); J Baker (ed) Sovereignty matters: locations of contestation and possibility in indigenous struggles for self-determination (2005). Reference by the Governor in Council concerning Certain Questions relating to the Secession of Quebec from Canada 115 International Law Reports 536; 1998 Can. Sup. Ct. LEXIS 39. R Emerson From empire to nation (1960); S Touval The boundary politics of independent Africa (1972). J Faundez ‘International law and wars of national liberation: use of force and intervention’ (1989) 1 Revue Africaine de Droit International Comparé 85, 90.