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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Erika de Wet argues that state practice reveals that democratic legitimacy has not established itself alongside effective control for the purpose of recognition of governments in customary international law. My response is that we do not need to look to custom, difficult as it is to identify, when we have legally binding obligations such as those set forth in both the OAS Charter and the Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC), not to mention the comparable European and African instruments. The new gold standard for recognition, I submit, is democratic legitimacy and respect for human rights, which has replaced “effective control.”
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6 OAS, Inter-American Democratic Charter, Sept. 11, 2001.
7 Id.
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