Over on the Reddit website, I sometimes lurk in the r/micronations forum. Recently there was a question there which gave me pause. Someone asked something along the lines of, "Do you consider virtual or LARP (Live Action Role Play) micronations real?"
Let's first delineate what we mean by those terms:
- A "virtual" micronation is one that focuses on building an online presence, sometimes in games such as Minecraft, rather than attempting to claim real-world territory, and
- A "LARP" micronation is one in which the citizens of the micronation claim assets, citizens, and/or resources that they do not physically have access to, and/or interacts with fictional entities. For example, I've seen micronations claim to have a national airline, and post AI-generated pictures of planes in the livery of that airline. I've also seen ones that claim to be at war with a "rebel insurgency" within their micronation.
- A "real" micronation is... well, I have zero idea what that is.
Most micronations who are questioned on their right to exist will point to the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (typically just referred to as the Montevideo Convention), which was signed at Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1933 and establishes the definition of a sovereign state under international law (Wikipedia link).
Article 1 of the Convention sets out the requirements for defining a state "as a person of international law":
- A permanent population;
- A defined territory;
- Government; and
- The capacity to enter into relations with other states.
So, how do our virtual and LARP micronations stack up?
- Any non-dormant micronation has a permanent population of at least one, in its founder. There's no minimum population set by the convention. So I think both LARP and virtual micronations meet this criteria.
- A virtual micronation has a defined territory, it just happens to be online. Since the Montevideo Convention was signed in 1933, it doesn't distinguish. Yes, it's a technicality, but technicalities of the law are the stuff that diplomacy is built on. LARP micronations, in my experience, also have claimed territory. Slabovia does too - we have a bunch of land on Mars, plus our own star. Again, the treaty doesn't say that the territory must be on this planet!
- Given that micronations, at their root, are all about government, I think we can say that any micronation satisfies this requirement, including LARP and virtual ones.
- It's been my experience that most micronations love to sign treaties with each other. I'm aware of at least one who claims to have done so with a thousand other micronations. Well, whatever floats your boat, I guess. Anyway, yes, all micronations definitely have the capacity to enter into relations with other states - it's just that some of us choose not to.
I also want to quickly point to Article 3 of the convention, which states that "the political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states". In other words, your micronation exists when you say it does, and you don't need anyone else's permission or recognition to make it so.
So, to sum up, yes, virtual and LARP micronations are "real", and it's really rude to even ask the question, in my opinion.
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| You can see the large Montevideo Convention poster in this photo, it's the oblong tan thing hanging in the middle of the picture (MicroCon 2019) |
(As an interesting footnote, only seventeen nations have signed and ratified the Montevideo Convention, and another three have signed it but not ratified it, whereas we've had a very large copy of the Montevideo Convention printed on a vinyl poster that's been at the last few MicroCon events, and that one has been signed by literally dozens of micronations.)
