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This academic work discusses the role and the function of the United Nations and the European Union in legitimacy in international policy. The main objective of this work is an investigation of classic definitions of peace- and independency processes, of national liberation struggles and the self-determination of peoples. In this context it is shown how these terms have developed over the past years and how these terms will have to be defined in the future. Given the passion and the desire for peace and democracy of the peoples and the minorities in developing countries worldwide, the situation particularly in the Middle East escalated. So how can existing criteria of the United Nations on the self-determination of these peoples be implemented with respect to freedom, democracy and state sovereignty?

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The Kurdish author Salim Atroshy from Mosul lived under Saddam Hussein´s regime and studied law and political science in Bagdad. As a member of an oppressed ethnic group, he came to Vienna in 1991 as refugee, where he now lives with his wife and his two children and received his doctorate in political science.

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