Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what (a) criteria and (b) guidance his Department uses to define the (i) characteristics, (ii) security and (iii) borders of a sovereign state.

The criteria for statehood were set out in a written answer to a PQ on 16 November 1989 by Sir Tim Sainsbury, then a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister, who provided that "we consider a State should have, and seem likely to continue to have, a clearly defined territory with a population, a Government who are able of themselves to exercise effective control of that territory, and independence in their external relations". This is based on the criteria for statehood set out in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States 1933, namely: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Recognition is a unilateral, political act and there is no legal obligation to recognise another entity as a state. Recognition is something that Her Majesty's Government can choose to grant at a time of her choosing, if at all.