A doctrine dating back to the 18th-c that cultural communities and national groupings have the right to determine their own destiny, including political independence and the right to self-rule. The principle that each nation has the right to fashion its own state is incorporated in the United Nations Charter, and is a major plank in anti-colonialism.
Self-determination or the right to self-determination is a concept of principle, wherein a people or nation, have a human right to statehood, and that such a state has an equal right to sovereignty.
Developed at least before 1859, the self-determination concept was at the time an ethical and political statement by the world community against several hundred years of European colonialism and frequent tyrannical rule.
History and overview
Many of the concepts embodied in the ideal of self-determination can be found in earlier documents such as the Declaration of Independence of the United States. The concept of the right to self-determination of a political community can be seen to date back at least as far as 1859 with John Stuart Mill's work On Liberty in which he argues that political communities are entitled collectively to determine their own affairs. In his work he argues that states should be seen as self-determining communities even if their internal political arrangements are not free, self-determination and political freedom are not equivalent terms.
At the ratification of the UN Charter in post World War II 1945, the signatories introduced the right of all people to self-determination into the framework of international law and diplomacy. In addition, the right to self-determination holds the prestigious position of Article 1 in both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the United Nations states that everyone has the right to a nationality and that no one should be arbitrarily deprived of a nationality or denied the right to change nationality. Self-determination is often invoked in national liberation struggles, succession of territories and constitutional disputes about how this right can be expressed to the satisfaction of opposing interest groups. Some felt that after decolonization, the right to self-determination should apply only to states and not to peoples, and to be circumscribed by the principles of territorial integrity and non-intervention. Many of the newly independent former colonies faced secessionist and irredentist movements and therefore there was an international consensus that self-determination did not apply to these movements. UN Resolution 1514(XV) was adopted and guarantees the right to self-determination of all peoples.
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 committed the idea of the right for self-determination to the body of international protocol. In essence, all people reserve the right to seek self-determination to address a lack of proper representation or oppression from any given government.
There is tension between the concept of self-determination and that of territorial integrity.
This conflict has been resolved in practice by defining the notion of "people" entitled to self-determination as persons living in a particular geographic area within a nation-state rather than persons sharing a common culture or language.
Problems of nationalism and fragmentation
Self-determination is a notoriously difficult principle to define and apply. A state is self-determining even if its citizens strive, and fail, to create free political institutions, however in turn, it is deprived of its self-determination if such institutions are established by an external power. In this way self-determination can be seen to be a parallel to state sovereignty.
In many cases self-determination is invoked where the there is an ethnic or religious minority within a specific geographic area seeking independence from a majority to escape prejudice or persecution. However, the right to self-determination has been most effectively employed in the decolonization movement. Given the perceived risk of constant fragmentation, states have approached self-determination cautiously. Methods of self-determination range from sovereignty referendum, as in the case of the people of Quebec in Canada, or as an armed struggle in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
In Europe after World War I, many of the former Empires destroyed in that war were broken up into ethnic states which themselves were amalgamations of peoples containing their own minorities, in Yugoslavia, the former Russian and Austro-Hungarian provinces, and in the Middle East. In Palestine, Jewish immigrants would claim self-determination to justify the creation of the state of Israel in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire, just as Palestinians would later claim independence as Palestine.
Given the rise of global transculturism and its effect on the concepts of nationality and nationhood, attempts have been made to reinterpret the "self-determination principle" in terms which do not rely on subjective or nationalistic definitions — typically refomulating the principle as an extension of Right to liberty, wherin a people ought not be subject to coercion, via the will of a non-representative form of government.
The threat of fragmentation due to self-determination can be regarded as very dangerous to other communities in a country, especially if the groups striving for self-determination live in an area with the majority of a country's wealth. On the other hand, supporters of self-determination argue that if the wealth is coming from the land they live in the local inhabitants deserve the wealth not the country as a whole.
Local interpretations
Wilsonian idealism
Wilson's ideas of self-determination originated in his Southern heritage and sympathies. Further, the key question is at what level do populations have the right to self-determination and the formation or preservation of a state, the empowerment of a local majority, and the formation of a local minority. In the United States, southern states' rights to determine their own destiny during the Civil War and Civil Rights era were held to be not absolute, especially since significant minorities there were oppressed.
Lenin on self-determination
Vladimir Lenin supported the concept of the right of a culturally distinct grouping to self-determination, albeit within the framework of proletarian internationalism and, as it turned out in the policy of the Soviet Union. The policy of Korenizatsiya seemed to indicate a sincere belief on the part of Lenin national self-determination.
In regard to a long running argument going on between Rosa Luxembourg, right-wing tendencies within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and the Bolsheviks, Lenin said:
...[T]he tendency of every national movement is towards the formation of national states, under which these requirements of modern capitalism are best satisfied. by examining the historico-economic conditions of the national movements, we must inevitably reach the conclusion that the self-determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and the formation of an independent national state. ...[It] would be wrong to interpret the right to self-determination as meaning-anything but the right to existence as a separate state."
Australia
Recently (2003 onwards), self-determination has become a topic of some debate in Australia in relation to Aborigines (indigenous Australians).
Self-determination issues of the United States
The colonisation of the North American continent and its Native American population has been the source of legal battles since the early 1800's. They hold that self-determination was never granted to native Hawaiians after the overthrow and thus a large measure of autonomy or independence should be granted to Hawaii. Opponents allege that this would violate the self-determination rights of the non-Hawaiian majority living in Hawaii now.
Some historians argue that the South was fighting for self-determination during the American Civil War, however others argue that the point is invalid because the South was not only repressing the self-determination rights of African Americans (a majority in some of the Confederate states) but also basic human rights in the institution of slavery.
Further, there have at times been calls for local self-determination by ethnic minority communities. For example, the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican internationalist group founded in Lincoln Park, Chicago in 1968, called not only for independence for Puerto Rico, but also for neighborhood empowerment within cities in the continental United States, which they characterized as self-determination in every barrio or neighborhood.
Israel and Palestine
The right to self-determination as outlined in public international law is often referenced by both sides in the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict —Palestinians assert a nationalist right to self-determination that has been and is currently hindered by Israeli policies in the regions it militarily occupies. Israel was, in turn, formed under the right to self-determination as outlined in the U.N. Neither country attempted to relieve the refugee crisis (although Jordan did alleviate this somewhat by granting Palestinians citizenship) and neither allowed (to different extents) self-determination in these territories. The PLO stated its goal to be the destruction of the State of Israel through armed struggle, and replacing it with an "independent Palestinian state" between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
User Comments Add a comment…