3 ODI Policy brief What it means to be de facto The term ‘de facto’ is used extensively in the academic literature to refer to a range of entities that aspire to be internationally recognised as governing a territory but have no, limited or provisional international recognition of their claims to statehood. Within the broader category of de facto entities, we can identify two sub-categories: de facto states – regions of internationally recognised states governed as a separate state and which seek formal international recognition of their independence (Somaliland, Transnistria and Northern Cyprus are all examples); and de facto authorities or governments which claim authority over the entire territory of a recognised state in place of the internationally recognised government (at time of writing, examples include the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Houthis in Yemen and the military governments and regimes of Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Myanmar, Niger and Sudan). A similar distinction can be made between de jure states and authorities. De jure states – the 193 recognised UN member states – do not always correspond neatly with de jure authorities (often referred to as internationally recognised governments) which may control only a limited part of their territory (as in the Central African Republic, Libya or Myanmar) or none at all (as in Afghanistan) but nevertheless are recognised by the ‘international community’ as that state’s legitimate government and continue to be treated as such (for example, by continuing to represent that state in the United Nations General Assembly). While the international community in general avoids judgements on the legitimacy of individual states’ governments (in other words, they adhere to the principle that states recognise states rather than governments (see FDFA, n.d.)), the UN is nevertheless required to pass judgement in cases when multiple authorities claim to represent a member state. In these cases the Credentials Committee, acting under the guidance of UN General Assembly Resolution 396(V),2 is called upon to adjudicate. An overview of cases from 1945 to the present indicates that there are no clearly defined principles on the basis of which decisions are made. Instead, criteria including territorial control, democratic legitimacy and respect for international human rights standards are considered on a case-by-case basis (Myanmar Accountability Project, 2021). The designation ‘de facto’ itself does not have one singular meaning, even within the academic and legal literatures. ‘Statehood’ too remains poorly defined – as Crawford (2006: 37) notes, ‘there has long been no generally accepted and satisfactory legal definition of statehood’. The use of the term ‘de facto’ (or equivalents such as a prefatory ‘so-called’ or inverted commas (as in ‘president’ or ‘government’) (Bryant and Hatay, 2020)) instead ‘indicates an acceptance, 2 ‘[W]henever more than one authority claims to be the government entitled to represent a Member State in the United Nations, the question should be considered in the light of the Purposes and Principles of the Charter and the circumstances of each case’.