Contemporary Anti-Colonial Self-Determination Claims and the Decolonisation of International Law

Abstract

The most prominent engagement of self-determination was in the decolonisation era, when the right facilitated the emergence to independence of formerly colonised ‘peoples’. The newly decolonised states met the ‘salt-water’ test of colonialism. Some contemporary commentators argue that self-determination’s mission of decolonisation is now complete. Self-determination is less frequently asserted today; however, contemporary ‘hard cases’ remain. Some of these cases involve peoples who can demonstrate a continuing colonial experience. For varying reasons, these claimants do not pass the ‘salt-water’ colonial test, and their claims have not adequately been addressed by the international community. Instead, claimant groups are abandoned to the political whims of their administering states. This article examines the significance of the colonial experience for two contemporary claimant peoples; Indigenous peoples in Australia and Irish nationalists in the North of Ireland. Data gathered through qualitative research interviews, and analysed according to a grounded theory approach, demonstrate that the self-determination claims of these peoples are stifled by the denial of their contemporary colonial experiences. The current failure of international law to consider these claims through a colonial lens is inhibitive of creative self-determination solutions in multi-ethnic states. Self-determination, as a universal human right, retains the potential to meet the needs of these contemporary, anti-colonial claimants. In this article, I demonstrate how international legal approaches to self-determination may be decolonised in order to facilitate the full and fair evaluation of contemporary anti-colonial claims.