scholarly journals “Kanaky, my land, for your liberty I will never stop fighting”: Investigating Kanak women activists’ roles, experiences, and strategies within the independence movement in Kanaky, New Caledonia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Prasanthi Cottingham
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
Research Findings

<p>This research uses a post-colonial feminist lens to investigate how development towards gender equality and equity can be promoted alongside processes of decolonisation in Kanaky-New Caledonia. In particular, it explores the ways that Kanak women in the pro-independence movement negotiate gender and indigeneity, and how these interactions subsequently influence society and the movement. Three key themes emerged from this research: violence, gender roles within the customary context compared to the western political context, and the responsive strategies that women employ. Issues raised related to violence focus on: physical violence related to political unrest, removal of self-determination, racial gaslighting around independence negotiations, gender and racial discrimination, and physiological and mental health. This thesis finds that Kanak women have different roles in customary contexts compared to political contexts. This thesis subsequently investigates how Kanak women experience and interpret these roles and highlights links and disconnects between gender roles and experiences in these two spheres. Tensions and negotiations between the customary sphere and the political sphere become very clear in institutions like the Customary Senate which occupies a place between the customary sphere and the Western political sphere. The Kanak women independence activist participants in this research utilise a plethora of strategies to navigate challenges they face in the customary sphere, in wider society, and within the independence movement. This indicates significant self-mobilisation of Kanak women towards gender equitable social change, which development actors should value and support. This research emphasises the intersectionality of Kanak women’s experiences, the importance of self-determination to gender and development strategies, and the value of recognising and supporting self-mobilisation. Based on these research findings this thesis argues that decolonisation and decoloniality are integral to gender-focused development.</p>

scholarly journals “Kanaky, my land, for your liberty I will never stop fighting”: Investigating Kanak women activists’ roles, experiences, and strategies within the independence movement in Kanaky, New Caledonia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Prasanthi Cottingham
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
Research Findings

<p>This research uses a post-colonial feminist lens to investigate how development towards gender equality and equity can be promoted alongside processes of decolonisation in Kanaky-New Caledonia. In particular, it explores the ways that Kanak women in the pro-independence movement negotiate gender and indigeneity, and how these interactions subsequently influence society and the movement. Three key themes emerged from this research: violence, gender roles within the customary context compared to the western political context, and the responsive strategies that women employ. Issues raised related to violence focus on: physical violence related to political unrest, removal of self-determination, racial gaslighting around independence negotiations, gender and racial discrimination, and physiological and mental health. This thesis finds that Kanak women have different roles in customary contexts compared to political contexts. This thesis subsequently investigates how Kanak women experience and interpret these roles and highlights links and disconnects between gender roles and experiences in these two spheres. Tensions and negotiations between the customary sphere and the political sphere become very clear in institutions like the Customary Senate which occupies a place between the customary sphere and the Western political sphere. The Kanak women independence activist participants in this research utilise a plethora of strategies to navigate challenges they face in the customary sphere, in wider society, and within the independence movement. This indicates significant self-mobilisation of Kanak women towards gender equitable social change, which development actors should value and support. This research emphasises the intersectionality of Kanak women’s experiences, the importance of self-determination to gender and development strategies, and the value of recognising and supporting self-mobilisation. Based on these research findings this thesis argues that decolonisation and decoloniality are integral to gender-focused development.</p>

Self-Determination Through Autonomy or Independence? – On the Current and Future Position of New Caledonia

ICL Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-105
Author(s):  
Markku Suksi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
European Court ◽  
Determination Process ◽  
The Right

Abstract New Caledonia is a colonial territory of France. Since the adoption of the Nouméa Accord in 1998, a period of transition towards the exercise of self-determination has been going on. New Caledonia is currently a strong autonomy, well entrenched in the legal order of France from 1999 on. The legislative powers have been distributed between the Congress of New Caledonia and the Parliament of France on the basis of a double enumeration of legislative powers, an arrangement that has given New Caledonia control over many material fields of self-determination. At the same time as this autonomy has been well embedded in the constitutional fabric of France. The Nouméa Accord was constitutionalized in the provisions of the Constitution of France and also in an Institutional Act. This normative framework created a multi-layered electorate that has presented several challenges to the autonomy arrangement and the procedure of self-determination, but the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee have resolved the issues regarding the right to vote in manners that take into account the local circumstances and the fact that the aim of the legislation is to facilitate the self-determination of the colonized people, the indigenous Kanak people. The self-determination process consists potentially of a series of referendums, the first of which was held in 2018 and the second one in 2020. In both referendums, those entitled to vote returned a No-vote to the question of ‘Do you want New Caledonia to attain full sovereignty and become independent?’ A third referendum is to be expected before October 2022, and if that one also results in a no to independence, a further process of negotiations starts, with the potential of a fourth referendum that will decide the mode of self-determination New Caledonia will opt for, independence or autonomy.

Barrio Women and Popular Politics in Chávez's Venezuela

2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (03) ◽  
pp. 97-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujatha Fernandes
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Grassroots Politics ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
Hugo Chavez

Abstract Since President Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela in 1998, ordinary women from the barrios, or shantytowns, of Caracas have become more engaged in grassroots politics; but most of the community leaders still are men. Chávez's programs are controlled by male-dominated bureaucracies, and many women activists still look to the president himself as the main source of direction. Nevertheless, this article argues, women's increasing local activism has created forms of popular participation that challenge gender roles, collectivize private tasks, and create alternatives to male-centric politics. Women's experiences of shared struggle from previous decades, along with their use of democratic methods of popular control, help prevent the state from appropriating women's labor. But these spaces coexist with more vertical, populist notions of politics characteristic of official sectors of Chavismo. Understanding such gendered dimensions of popular participation is crucial to analyzing urban social movements.

scholarly journals The Complex Knot between Sovereignty of States and Secession in International Law: Evidence from Around the World

2019 ◽  
Vol IV (III) ◽  
pp. 56-63
Author(s):  
Ayaz Ali Shah ◽  
Nilofar Ihsan ◽  
Hina Malik
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Parent State ◽  
The World

It is interesting to note that international law doesn't talk about the secession of any group from the parent state in express words. However, at the same time, it doesn't deny people's right to self-determination too. Despite all this ambiguity about secession in international law, state dissolution hasn't stopped. This secession is justified on two strands of theoretical arguments. The first one suggests that it is everyone's fundamental right to live or not to live in a particular state by forming a state of their own. The second one suggests that if a state commits atrocities on a particular community, and the victims exhaust all legal and democratic means to emancipate themselves and their community, they can resort to secession and separation from the parent state in the last resort. However, secession on such grounds is covered by norms and provisions of international law in the post-colonial world.

scholarly journals Narrative Strategies of Decolonisation: Autoethnography in Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samrita Sinha ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Culture Of Impunity ◽  
Right Of Self Determination

According to John Quintero, “The decolonisation agenda championed by the United Nations is not based exclusively on independence. It is the exercise of the human right of self-determination, rather than independence per se, that the United Nations has continued to push for.” Situated within ontologies of the human right of self-determination, this paper will focus on an analysis of The Legends of Pensam by Mamang Dai, a writer hailing from the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, to explore the strategies of decolonisation by which she revitalizes her tribe’s cultural enunciations. The project of decolonisation is predicated on the understanding that colonialism has not only displaced communities but also brought about an erasure of their epistemologies. Consequently, one of its major agenda is to recuperate displaced epistemic positions of such communities. In the context of Northeast India, the history of colonial rule and governance has had long lasting political repercussions which has resulted not only in a culture of impunity and secessionist violence but has also led to the reductive homogeneous construction of the Northeast as conflict ridden. In the contemporary context, the polyethnic, socio-cultural fabric of the Northeast borderlands foregrounds it as an evolving post-colonial geopolitical imaginary. In the light of this, the objective of this paper is to arrive at the ramifications of employing autoethnography as a narrative regime by which Mamang Dai reaffirms the Adi community’s epistemic agency and reclaims the human right towards a cultural self-determination.

Regional Hegemony: Domination and Resistance in the Horn of Africa

1993 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Iyob
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
African Unity ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Self Determination

Contested territories and challenges to state sovereignty have become almost the norm in post-colonial Africa. The nexus of many of these conflicts resides in a status quo which gives primacy to territorial integrity over the right of peoples to self-determination. The comparative advantage thus accorded to sovereign states has resulted in a disequilibrium that legitimated the violation of both regionally and internationally sanctioned rules enshrined in the Organisation of African Unity (O.A.U.) and the United Nations (U.N.). Thus a normative bias in favour of the imperative of stability and order was justified by reference to the fragility of the newly independent régimes. In the process, the right of self-determination was narrowly interpreted to refer solely to those African peoples waging liberation struggles against European colonialism or white rule.

POST-GADDAFI REPERCUSSIONS IN NORTHERN MALI

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Klute
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Regional Power ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Mode Of Life ◽  
Warrior Class

While utopias of (political) autonomy or an independent (Tuareg) state have for long been part and parcel of internal debates among Tuareg, it was only recently that the claim for independence was formulated to the outside world. A Tuareg state, Azawad, was even put into practice, albeit for some months only. A second characteristic is that there has never been a serious attempt at integrating all Tuareg, regardless of the country they are living in, into a unique nation-state. Is the 'national identity' of the respective post-colonial states so strong that it supplants the 'claim for independence'? Or is the pre-colonial form of political organisation among Tuareg, the regional drum-group (ettebel), still so vivid that it impedes the establishment of a state that would encompass all Tuareg? Apart from the independence movement MNLA (Mouvement National pour la Libération de l'Azawad) operating in Northern Mali, there are Islamist groups which fight for the spread of an Islamic mode of life. Some of these succeeded in recruiting Tuareg, particularly among the Tuareg of the Kidal region. The appeal of the 'Islamic claim' to the Kidal Tuareg goes back to their genesis as a political entity during the period of colonial conquest when the French installed a regional 'drum-group' within the framework of administrative chieftainship. As nearly all regional Tuareg claim descent from members of the Islamic army that conquered North Africa in the 7th century, regional power differs from power structures in all other regions inhabited by Tuareg. It is based on a double legitimacy: that of Islamic nobility, and that of the Tuareg warrior class. For several months, however, there has been ideological dissent among the Tuareg followers of the Islamic movements. This debate revolves around several issues, particularly the question as to whether or not the Islamic mode of life is to be limited to the sole region of Kidal. 

Beyond self-determination: norms contestation, constituent diplomacies and the co-production of sovereignty

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-358
Author(s):  
NOÉ CORNAGO
Keyword(s):  
Political Community ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Realities

Abstract:The idea of a perfect national political community, entirely confined within the contours of a corresponding state, is one of the foundational fictions of global modernity. Its formal crystallisation in the legal grammars of the right to self-determination has been however, particularly in the post-colonial era, highly problematic and full of ambiguities. Drawing on this background, this article contends that diplomacy offers frequently a more promising venue for dealing with the challenge of political pluralism than appealing to either the unstable grammars of the right to self-determination or a reified understanding of the principle of territorial integrity of states. In so doing, firstly, the right to self-determination is critically examined. Instead of attempting to articulate its formal content, the malleability of its legal grammars and political realities, will be emphasised. Secondly, based on the discussion of a variety of historical cases, the notion of ‘constituent diplomacies’ will be advanced, aiming to show how the agonistic accommodation of political and territorial pluralism through diplomacy was crucial not only in the formative processes of modern sovereign states but also nowadays. Finally, this relational understanding of the historical forms of governance of political pluralism within and beyond state boundaries will be re-examined, beyond its ethno-political dimensions, through the prism of the complex interplay between the material and ideational conditions for the co-production of sovereignty in the context of new global capitalism.

Gender, Nation, and Situated Intersectionality: The Case of Catalan Pro-independence Feminism

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 608-636
Author(s):  
Maria Rodó-Zárate
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Stateless Nations ◽  
And Gender

AbstractDebates on nation, self-determination, and nationalism tend to ignore the gender dimension, women's experiences, and feminist proposals on such issues. In turn, feminist discussions on the intersection of oppressions generally avoid the national identity of stateless nations as a source of oppression. In this article, I relate feminism and nationalism through an intersectional framework in the context of the Catalan pro-independence movement. Since the 1970s, Catalan feminists have been developing theories and practices that relate gender and nationality from an intersectional perspective, which may challenge hegemonic genealogies of intersectionality and general assumptions about the relation between nationalism and gender. Focusing on developments made by feminist activists from past and present times, I argue that women are key agents in national construction and that situated intersectional frameworks may provide new insights into relations among axes of inequalities beyond the Anglocentric perspective.

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