The right to self-determination for the people of an independent state: an overview

2018 ◽  
pp. 56-109
Author(s):  
Manuela Melandri
Keyword(s):  
Self Determination ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right

scholarly journals Revisiting the ‘Recognition’ of the Palestinians’ Right to Self-Determination: Peoples as Territories

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shadi Sakran
Keyword(s):  
Self Determination ◽  
Advisory Opinion ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Icj ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
General Fact

‘[B]ehind every Palestinian there is a great general fact: that he once – and not so long ago– lived in a land of his own called Palestine, which is now no longer his homeland.’ The question of whether the Palestinian people, as a people, are entitled to exercise the right to external self-determination has been highly controversial over the years. Divided scholarly research, particularly regarding the attitude of the State of Israel which, at time of writing, has not yet explicitly recognized the Palestinian peoples’ right to emerge as an independent State, serves as evidence to this claim. In 2004, the ICJ in the Wall Advisory Opinion observed that the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is no longer in issue. This observation serves as the benchmark for this paper to revisit the identification of a people under international law. This paper critically examines whether constitutive and declaratory theories of recognition in statehood can assist in understanding the concept of a people in the law of self-determination. While concluding that neither theory of recognition is satisfactory, this paper argues that application of the right to self-determonation, within and beyond the colonial context, is inevitably linked to the territory peoples inhabit. Although the relationship between peoples and territories should come as no surprise, the key element in determining a people is not based on the people but on the status of the territory they inhabit.

scholarly journals Independence, Sovereignty, Preponderance – The Prevalence and the Territorial Expansion of State Power

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Dardan Vuniqi
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
State Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
The People ◽  
Independent States ◽  
The Right ◽  
Water Space ◽  
State Territory

State is society’s need for the existence of an organized power, equipped with the right equipments of coercion and able to run the society, by imposing the choices that seem reasonable to them, through legal norms. State is an organization of state power; it is an organized power which imposes its will to all the society and has a whole mechanism to execute this will. The state realizes its functions through power, which is a mechanism to accomplish its relevant functions. The power’s concept is a social concept, which can be understood only as a relation between two subjects, between two wills. Power is the ability to impose an order, a rule and other’s behavior in case that he doesn’t apply voluntary the relevant norm, respectively the right. Using state power is related to creation and application, respectively the implementation of law. To understand state power better, we have to start from its overall character. So, we notice that in practice we encounter different kinds of powers: the family’s one, the school’s one, the health’s one, the religion’s, culture’s etc. The notion of powers can be understood as a report between two subjects, two wills. Power is an order for other’s behavior. Every power is some kind of liability, dependence from others. In the legal aspect, supremacy of state presents the constitutive – legislative form upon the powers that follow after it. Supremacy, respectively the prevalence, is stronger upon other powers in its territory. For example we take the highest state body, the parliament as a legislative body, where all other powers that come after it, like the executive and court’s one, are dependable on state’s central power. We can’t avoid the carriage of state’s sovereignty in the competences of different international organizations. Republic, based on ratified agreements for certain cases can overstep state’s power on international organizations. The people legitimate power and its bodies, by giving their votes for a mandate of governance (people’s verdict). It is true that we understand people’s sovereignty only as a quality of people, where with the word people we understand the entirety of citizens that live in a state. The sovereignty’s case actualizes especially to prove people’s right for self-determination until the disconnection that can be seen as national – state sovereignty. National sovereignty is the right of a nation for self-determination. Sovereignty’s cease happens when the monopoly of physical strength ceases as well, and this monopoly is won by another organization. A state can be ceased with the voluntary union of two or more states in a mutual state, or a state can be ceased from a federative state, where federal units win their independence. In this context we have to do with former USSR’s units, separated in some independent states, like Czechoslovakia unit that was separated in two independent states: in Czech Republic and Slovakia. Former Yugoslavia was separated from eight federal units, today from these federal units seven of them have won their independence and their international recognition, and the Republic of Kosovo is one amongst them. Every state power’s activity has legal effect inside the borders of a certain territory and inside this territory the people come under the relevant state’s power. Territorial expansion of state power is three dimensional. The first dimension includes the land inside a state’s borders, the second dimension includes the airspace upon the land and the third dimension includes water space. The airspace upon inside territorial waters is also a power upon people and the power is not universal, meaning that it doesn’t include all mankind. State territory is the space that’s under state’s sovereignty. It is an essential element for its existence. According to the author Juaraj Andrassy, state territory lies in land and water space inside the borders, land and water under this space and the air upon it. Coastal waters and air are considered as parts that belong to land area, because in every case they share her destiny. Exceptionally, according to the international right or international treaties, it is possible that in one certain state’s territory another state’s power can be used. In this case we have to do with the extraterritoriality of state power. The state extraterritoriality’s institute is connected to the concept of another state’s territory, where we have to do with diplomatic representatives of a foreign country, where in the buildings of these diplomatic representatives, the power of the current state is not used. These buildings, according to the international right, the diplomatic right, have territorial immunity and the relevant host state bodies don’t have any power. Regarding to inviolability, respectively within this case, we have two groups to mention: the real immunity and the personal immunity, which are connected with the extraterritoriality’s institute. Key words: Independence, Sovereignty, Preponderance, Prevalence, Territorial Expansion.

Between Race and Nation: Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Self-Determination

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond Jagmohan
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Black Diaspora ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Marcus Garvey ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
The Right

This essay argues that Marcus Garvey held a constructivist theory of self-determination, one that saw nationalism and transnationalism as mutually necessary and reinforcing ideals. The argument proceeds in three steps. First it recovers Garvey’s transnationalist emphasis by looking at his intellectual debts to other diaspora struggles, namely political Zionism and Irish nationalism. Second it argues that Garvey held a constructivist view of national identity, which also grounds his argument that the black diaspora has a right to collective self-determination. Third it explicates Garvey’s further contention that the right to self-determination and the persistence of oppression give the African diaspora a pro tanto claim to an independent state, which he considered essential to vanquishing white supremacy and realizing collective self-rule.

The Sudanese Revolution of October 1964

1967 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusuf Fadl Hasan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Advisory Council ◽  
World War ◽  
The People ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
Traditional Institutions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Self Determination ◽  
Legislative Assembly

About 70 years ago, the Mahdist or Ansār state, in many ways a traditional Muslim government, crumbled under the fire of the Anglotional Egyptian cannons. On the condominium government that followed fell the task of pacifying the country and introducing western concepts of administration. All Sudanese attempts to defy foreign domination had failed completely by 1924. The British, the stronger of the two partners, had the lion's share in shaping the destiny of the country. Towards the end of World War II, the influential and educated Sudanese, like other Africans and Asians, demanded the right of self-determination. In 1946, in preparation for this, a sample of western democracy was introduced in the form of an Advisory Council. This Council, which was restricted to the northern Sudan, was followed two years later by the Legislative Assembly, which had slightly more powers. Although these democratic innovations were quite alien to the country and were introduced at a relatively late date, they were in keeping with traditional institutions. Until recently, the Sudan consisted of a number of tribal units where no classes or social distinctions existed and the tribal chief was no more than the first among equals; the people were therefore not accustomed to autocratic rule.

Decolonization in International Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai Taha
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Third World

In Gillo Pontecorvo’s evocative film The Battle of Algiers (1966), viewers reach the conclusion that the fight against colonialism would not be fought at the UN General Assembly. Decolonization would take place through the organized resistance of colonized people. Still, the 1945 United Nations Charter and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights provided some legal basis, albeit tenuous, for self-determination. When Third World leaders assembled in the 1955 Bandung Conference, it became clear that the UN needed to shift gears on the question of decolonization. By 1960, and through a show of Asian and African votes at the General Assembly, the Declaration for the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was adopted, effectively outlawing colonialism and affirming the right of all peoples to self-determination. Afro-Asian solidarity took a different form in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, which founded the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The conference gathered leftist activists and leaders from across the Third World, who would later inspire radical movements and scholarship on decolonization and anticolonial socialism. This would also influence the adoption of the 1974 Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and later lead to UNESCO’s series that starts with Mohammed Bedjaoui’s famous overture, Towards a New International Economic Order (1979; cited as Bedjaoui 1979 under the Decolonization “Moment”). This article situates this history within important international-law scholarship on decolonization. First, it introduces different approaches to decolonization and international law; namely, postcolonial, Marxist, feminist, and Indigenous approaches. Second, it highlights seminal texts on international law and the colonial encounter. Third, it focuses on scholarship that captures the spirit of the “decolonization moment” as a political and temporal rupture, but also as a continuity, addressing, fourth, decolonization and neocolonial practices. Finally, this article ends with some of the most important works on international law and settler colonialism in the 21st century.

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.

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

What's So Special About Nations?

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 283-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Self Determination ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right ◽  
Substantial Degree

Until quite recently, most Anglo-American political philosophers have had little if anything to say about national self-determination. However, a growing number of prominent political philosophers are now endorsing national self-determination. This new-found enthusiasm is surprising if not ironic, since it comes at a time at which genocidal ethno-nationalist conflicts (in the Balkans, in Rwanda and Burundi, etc.) might seem to lend credence to the view that the doctrine that every nation should have its own state is both impractical and dangerous, and that the nationalist mentality is often racist, xenophobic, exclusionary, and morally regressive. In this essay I will question the wisdom of this new-found enthusiasm for national self-determination. I will probe what I shall call the Strong National Self-Determination Thesis (or, more briefly, the Strong Thesis). This is the assertion that every nation as such has a right to some substantial degree of self-government and there is a presumption that every nation as such has a right to its own independent state (where this includes the right to secede from another state). I call this the Strong Thesis because it is more robust than the thesis that nations have a right to some form of self-government.

scholarly journals History of self-determination of the people of Donbass. experience of the Soviet Republic of Donetsk and Krivoy Rog

2019 ◽  
pp. 148-152
Author(s):  
Vladislav V. Gruzdev ◽  
Dmitriy A. Babichev ◽  
Natal'ya A. Babicheva
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Right ◽  
Historical Past

The article is devoted to the burning problem that arose in 2014 in the Ukraine, in the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, and that concerns the right of the people of Donbass to self-determination. This problem is not only of a local territorial nature, but it is also one of the most complex debatable problems of international law. Since the right to self-determination contradicts the principle of territorial integrity of the state, the consideration and solution of this issue is the most burning for the whole population living on the territory of the self-proclaimed people's republics of Lugansk and Donetsk. In the article, the authors analyse the concept of "self-determination of the people" and give a generalised characteristic of it, approving that it is the right of every nation to solve the issues of state structure, political status, economic, social and cultural development independently and at its own discretion. The author also examines the historical past of the people of Donbass, where, in terms of the Republic of Donetsk and Krivoy Rog and various documentary historical and legal materials, we come to the conclusion that the population of Donbass has the right to social, economic, cultural, spiritual and other development just as all the recognised countries of the world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document