Experts on international law and state sovereignty discussed the right to self-determinationits origins, what it entails, and the nature of international legal language sanctioning and defining it. Focusing on U.S. policy toward actual self-determination and separatist movements and the strategies and options available to the United States to mediate or intercede in them, the Institute of Peace and the State Department's Policy Planning Staff held a second meeting in March 1996 to examine ways that the United States and the international community might work to promote successful outcomes to territorial or separatist disputes, with "successful" broadly defined as nonviolent and nonsecessionist.