When does a region have the right to declare independence?

[bgwah]

Are we talking international recognition? There's obviously a lot of politics behind it all. The US/UK/France are often on the other side of Russia/China, and their veto powers will stop any official UN recognition of border changes. If a country can agree to split and none of the permanent members of the security council object, then a new state can be recognized.

I think there's obviously a lot of hypocrisy behind what each side recognizes. For example, a NATO member has already done something very similar to what Russia did in Crimea, but despite all of our condemnations Turkey is still a part of NATO.

The problem you run into drawing lines along ethnic/linguistic/religious differences is that many areas are mixed. One side of a river might have a 60-40 majority of Ethnicity A, while the other side has a 60-40 majority of Ethnicity B. Does it really make sense to divide that area along ethnic lines? Larger cities in particular are usually very mixed. Are people supposed to just move? Population transfers aren't exactly desirable. And people are always moving inside of a country. The current demographic makeup of a country might not reflect historical boundaries. Brussels is historically Flemish, but now is mostly French.

Unfortunately some regions like Iraq are so unstable and violent that population transfers are going to happen either way, and I think one could make an argument that partition is the least terrible option available.

In some of these countries there are often sparsely populated areas in between two populated parts of a country. If natural resources weren't an issue, I imagine Cyrenaica could split off of Libya fairly nicely. Or to use an example that already happened, splitting Pakistan and Bangladesh seems reasonable enough, given that there was a huge country separating them.

I think a worry people have with splitting African and Asian countries is that once it happens a few times, it will motivate further independence movements and cause wars, genocides, and instability.