scholarly journals What and who prevent the Kurdish people from exercising their right to self-determination?

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-302
Author(s):  
Dzhamal Z. Mutagirov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
System Study ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
United Nations Charter ◽  
Methodological Aspects

It will soon be 75 years since the United Nations Charter proclaimed the equal rights of peoples including their right to self-determination, as well as the obligations of countries — members to protect these rights collectively. In 1966, the International Covenants on Human Rights were signed and entered into force in 1976. So began with the confirmation of the right of peoples to self-determination and clarification of the content of this right. In subsequent decades, the UN and continental organizations have adopted hundreds of international agreements on certain as- pects of people’s rights (to choose a social system, study in native languages, to development and progress, etc.). However, many ethnic groups still cannot use their lawfully granted rights due to reasons which are beyond their control. The author of the article provides an explanation of the reasons preventing people from realizing the selfdetermination right recognized by the world community on the example of the Kurdish people. The theoretical and methodological aspects of the problem may be equally applicable to other peoples who, against their will, find themselves in multinational states.

Reflections on the Indonesian Case

1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rupert Emerson
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
General Assertion ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Right ◽  
United Nations Charter

The tangled affairs of Indonesia, twice thrust upon the Security Council, have served as an admirable touchstone of the principles, purposes, and effectiveness of the United Nations as well as of the policies of some of its leading members. Fundamental principles of the new postwar order were at stake. The Atlantic Charter had affirmed the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they would live, and the collapse of empires before the Japanese onslaught led to the widespread conclusion that the old colonial system was dead. These doctrines found sober and modified expression not only in Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter, but also in the more general assertion of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples and of the universal application of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The rights of dependent peoples, the validity of the doctrine of self-determination, and the possibilities for peaceful change all hovered about the Security Council chamber in the course of the debates on the two Indonesian cases.

scholarly journals ARKTISKE FOLK SOM STATISTER OG AKTØRER PÅ DEN GLOBALE SCENE

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Sejersen
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Extreme Pressure ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Arctic Communities ◽  
The Right

Frank Sejersen: Arctic people as by-standers and actors at the global stage For centuries, the indigenous peoples of the Arctic have been perceived as isolated from the rest of the world. The article argues that secluded Arctic communities do not exist and that Arctic peoples are integrated into numerous political, cultural and economic relations of a global extent. The pre-colonial inter-continental trade between Siberia and Alaska and the increased militarization the whole circumpolar region are but two examples. Throughout history, indigenous peoples of the Arctic have been players on the global stage. Today, this position has been strengthened because political work on this stage is imperative in order to secure the welfare and possibilities of local Arctic communities. To mention an example, Arctic peoples’ hunting activities have been under extreme pressure from the anti-harvesting movement. The anti-harvesting organizations run campaigns to ban hunting and stop the trade with products from whales, seals and furbearing animals. Thus, political and cultural processes far from the homeland of Arctic peoples, have consequences for the daily life of many Arctic families. The global stage has become an important comerstone in indigenous peoples’ strive to gain more control over their own future. The right to trade, development and self-determination are some of the rights they claim.

scholarly journals Declaration as Disavowal: The Politics of Race and Empire in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Stone Mackinnon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The World ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Racial Domination ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
The Right

This article argues that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), by claiming certain inheritances from eighteenth-century American and French rights declarations, simultaneously disavowed others, reshaping the genre of the rights declaration in ways amenable to forms of imperial and racial domination. I begin by considering the rights declaration as genre, arguing that later participants can both inherit and disavow aspects of what came before. Then, drawing on original archival research, I consider the drafting of the UDHR, using as an entry point the reception of the NAACP’s Appeal to the World petition, edited by W.E.B. DuBois. I reconstruct conversations within the drafting committee about the right to petition, self-determination, and the right to rebellion, and the separation of the Declaration from the rights covenants, to illustrate the allegiances between US racial politics and French imperial politics, and their legacies for our contemporary conceptions of human rights.

World Order after Caucasian War

2010 ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
V. Sheinis
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
Double Standard ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Policy Choice ◽  
International Policy ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Supranational Institutions ◽  
The U.S

The world order based on Yalta and Potsdam decisions as well as on two nuclear superpowers infighting has filed as a history. What is coming up to take its place? A correlation between power and law in international policy, national sovereignty and supranational institutions, territorial integrity of states and the right of nations to self-determination, bloc infighting atavisms, so called "double standard" and international interventions – these are critical debating points that the author develops his own approach to. The role of the U.S. in world policy, and the foreign policy choice of Russia are also examined.

Hegel's Critique of the Triumph of Verstand in Modernity

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (01) ◽  
pp. 54-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Houlgate
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
The People ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Revolution

In his lectures on the philosophy of history Hegel passes this famous judgement on the French Revolution. “Anaxagoras had been the first to say that nous governs the world; but only now did humanity come to recognize that thought should rule spiritual actuality. This was thus a magnificent dawn”. What first gave rise to discontent in France, in Hegel's view, were the heavy burdens that pressed upon the people and the government's inability to procure for the Court the means of supporting its luxury and extravagance. But soon the new spirit of freedom and enlightenment began to stir in men's minds and carry them forward to revolution. “One should not, therefore, declare oneself against the assertion”, Hegel concludes, “that the Revolution received its first impulse from Philosophy” (VPW, p 924). However, Hegel points out that the legacy of the revolution is actually an ambiguous one. For, although the principles which guided the revolution were those of reason and were indeed magnificent – namely, that humanity is born to freedom and self-determination – they were held fast in their abstraction and turned “polemically”, and at times terribly, against the existing order (VPW, p 925). What ultimately triumphed in the revolution was thus not concrete reason itself, but abstract reason or understanding (VPW, p 923). In Hegel's view, the enduring legacy of such revolutionary understanding was, not so much the Terror, but the principle that “the subjective wills of the many should hold sway” (VPW, p 932). This principle, which Hegel calls the principle of “liberalism” and which we would call the principle of majority rule, has since spread from France to become one of the governing principles of modern stat. It has been used to justify granting universal suffrage, to justify depriving corporations and the nobility of the right to sit in the legislature, and in some cases to justify abolishing the monarchy. What is of crucial importance for Hegel, however, is that such measures have not rendered the state more modern and rational, but have in fact distorted the modern state.

scholarly journals Towards A Bill of Rights for a Democratic South Africa

1991 ◽  
Vol 35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albie Sachs
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
World Community ◽  
African People ◽  
Constitutional Level ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual

All revolutions are impossible until they happen; then they become inevitable. South Africa has for long been trembling between the impossible and the inevitable, and it is in this singularly unstable situation that the question of human rights and the basics of government in post-apartheid society demands attention.No longer is it necessary to spend much time analysing schemes to modernize, reform liberalize, privatize, or even democratize apartheid. Like slavery and colonialism, apartheid is regarded as irremediably bad. There cannot be good apartheid, or degrees of acceptable apartheid. The only questions are how to end the system as rapidly as possible and how to ensure that the new society which replaces it lives up to the ideals of the South African people and the world community. More specifically, at the constitutional level, the issue is no longer whether to have democracy and equal rights, but how fully to achieve these principles and how to ensure that within the overall democratic scheme, the cultural diversity of the country is accommodated and the individual rights of citizens respected.

Kosovo

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Judah
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Western Balkans ◽  
National Pride ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Accessible Format

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. A tiny country of just two million people, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanians, Kosovo is central - geographically, historically, and politically - to the future of the Western Balkans and, in turn, its potential future within the European Union. But the fate of both Kosovo, condemned by Serbian leaders as a “fake state” and the region as a whole, remains uncertain. In Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know, Tim Judah provides a straight-forward guide to the complicated place that is Kosovo. Judah, who has spent years covering the region, offers succinct, penetrating answers to a wide range of questions: Why is Kosovo important? Who are the Albanians? Who are the Serbs? Why is Kosovo so important to Serbs? What role does Kosovo play in the region and in the world? Judah reveals how things stand now and presents the history and geopolitical dynamics that have led to it. The most important of these is the question of the right to self-determination, invoked by the Kosovo Albanians, as opposed to right of territorial integrity invoked by the Serbs. For many Serbs, Kosovo's declaration of independence and subsequent recognition has been traumatic, a savage blow to national pride. Albanians, on the other hand, believe their independence rights an historical wrong: the Serbian conquest (Serbs say “liberation”) of Kosovo in 1912. For anyone wishing to understand both the history and possible future of Kosovo at this pivotal moment in its history, this book offers a wealth of insight and information in a uniquely accessible format.

Changing African Perspectives on the Right of Self-Determination in the Wake of the Banjul Charter on Human and Peoples′ Rights

1985 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Kwaw Nyameke Blay
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Southern Sudan ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
United Nations Charter

In the history of modern Africa the issue of self-determination has always been of special significance. For a better part of a century and in some cases more, almost the entire continent was subject to colonisation by various European powers. The end of the Second World War and the subsequent adoption of the United Nations Charter, incorporating the principle of self-determination, heralded a new phase for the African colonies in international relations. Defined in its simplest terms, self-determination is the principle by virtue of which a people freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Selfdetermination is in essence the right of self-government. A territory exercises the right by either opting to establish itself as an independent state, associating with an existing state or by accepting to be integrated into an existing state. Self-determination so defined was thus used as the basis for decolonisation in Africa and provided the foundations for equal statehood for the former colonies of Africa in international relations.After decolonisation, the issue of self-determination still persists in Africa attracting sentiments and implications well exemplified by the conflicts Over Biafra and Katanga in the 1960s and currently in Eritrea, the Tigray province of Ethiopia and the Southern Sudan. The very successful propagation of self-determination as the right of every people to self-government by African nationalists during the colonial days seems to have left behind a legacy of a question for post-independence Africa—is the ideal of self-determination

The Limits of Self-Determination: The Case of the Katanga Secession

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 404-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Lemarchand
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Small States ◽  
The World ◽  
States Government ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right

Not the least paradoxical aspect of the United Nations mandate in the Congo, as described in the three-power resolution adopted by the Security Council on November 24, 1961, is that it was designed to prevent the exercise of a right which is explicitly recognized by the Charter. In effect, by “completely rejecting the claim of the Katanga as a sovereign independent Nation” and “recognizing the government of the Republic of the Congo as exclusively responsible for the conduct of the external affairs of the Congo,” the authors of the resolution clearly denied the provincial authorities of the Katanga the right to self-determination. Similarly, the support given by the United States government to the resolution, reaffirmed in several official statements, seems hardly compatible with our long-standing moral commitment to the Wilsonian principle that “the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and territorial integrity that the great and powerful states expect and insist upon.” Actually, what may at first sight appear to be a sign of inconsistency is rather a reflection of the fundamental ambiguity in the concept of self-determination.

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