The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States
was a treaty signed at Montevideo on 26 December 1933, at the
Seventh International Conference of American States. The convention was
signed by 19 states, 3 with reservations.
Article 1 sets out the criteria for statehood:
- The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.
The remaining articles set out various rights and duties of states.
The Montevideo is a regional American convention; but the principles contained in this article have been generally recognized as an accurate statement of customary international law.
Some have questioned whether these criteria are sufficient. According to the constitutive theory of statehood, a state exists only insofar as it is recognized by other states.
Founders of "non-territorial" micronations commonly assert that the requirement in the Montevideo Convention of a defined territory is in some way wrong-headed, for largely unspecified reasons.
