Alongside the prohibition of the use of force, self-determination constitutes the most important fundamental principle of contemporary international law. It can certainly be described as the most revolutionary of all existing fundamental principles. For the first time in the history of international law, one of its rules recognises the right of certain human communities, the ‘peoples’, to freely decide their international status, which includes the possibility of independence. In other words, the right to create their own State. Before the emergence of such a right, all struggles for independence were considered to be internal conflicts or civil wars, for which international law had little to say. They were merely envisaged as ‘domestic matters’.