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Plain-language explainers for the terms and disputes that recur across the atlas. Legal explanations cite the instruments and courts they rely on.

  1. Free association and integration

    Two recognised alternatives to independence for non-self-governing territories, and the conditions the UN attached to them.

    1 min read

  2. How to evaluate a source about a disputed history

    Questions to ask of any source on a contested past, and how this atlas labels and uses sources.

    2 min read

  3. How to use this atlas

    A short guide to finding cases, reading their pages and checking the evidence behind them.

    1 min read

  4. Independence, autonomy and self-government

    Three different political arrangements that are often confused, and why this atlas keeps them apart.

    2 min read

  5. Recognition versus effective administration

    Who recognises a claim and who actually administers a territory are different questions, and a map can easily blur them.

    1 min read

  6. Referendums: what the question and rules change

    Votes on independence differ in their questions, voters, counting and legal effect. A percentage means little without them.

    2 min read

  7. Secession, decolonisation and state dissolution

    Three routes by which new states have emerged, and why the legal questions differ between them.

    2 min read

  8. What self-determination means in different contexts

    Self-determination is a legal and political principle whose consequences depend on context. It is not an automatic right to secede.

    2 min read

  9. Why boundaries differ between maps

    Maps of the same area can show treaty lines, administrative borders, lines of control or cultural regions. They answer different questions.

    2 min read

  10. Why population and support estimates can disagree

    Numbers about peoples, votes and opinion depend on who is counted, when, and against what total.

    2 min read