Territorial integrity has in the past decades been facing tremendous challenges.
Self-determination claims have dramatically increased and led very often to civil
wars. Some states have even been disintegrated. External interventions have
put severe stress on territorial sovereignty. Old doctrines such as humanitarian
intervention have been revived by some global and regional powers in order to
achieve their own political goals. Last but not least, globalization has weakened the
states to the extent that some have started to lose their congruence with their own
nations, which has in fact led to the emergence of ethnonationalism and the
radicalization of nationalistic movements claiming purely and simply their own
independence. In all these situations, International Law has not been of great help to
the states in order to meet these challenges. It was so because International Law
does not provide for any particular protection to territorial integrity, although the
latter is a cornerstone of that law.