For most people, being a state citizen is as much a reality as having parents, but the international order also has its orphans. If you are a resident of Kosovo or Turkish Cyprus or a string of post-Soviet territories, you are currently a second-class human being: it is hard to travel abroad or get an international bank transfer, and your team cannot even make it to the qualifying rounds of the World Cup.

For years this has been just the way the international order works, but events in the Balkans are shaking things up. On May 21, Montenegro holds a referendum on independence. Last week Kosovo, which has spent years in legal limbo, held the latest round of United Nations-sponsored talks, which most people expect to end with it attaining statehood. Justifiably so - the Kosovo Albanians are currently being punished for having been citizens of a state that never properly enfranchised them. Yet independence also brings big responsibilities. Kosovo is being asked to prove that it will respect its Balkan neighbours and Serb minority, who have either fled the province since the 1999 war or live in fearful enclaves.