Self-determination: from decolonization to deterritorialization

Abstract

Unresolved claims to self-determination are among the biggest challenges in global politics today. A large number of groups in all parts of the world, from indigenous peoples to religious, linguistic and ethnic minorities, seek independence or greater participation in the determination of their futures. However, several problems associated with the conceptualization of self-determination are limiting opportunities for the peaceful resolution of such claims. The international community lacks a coherent legal framework for extending the right of self-determination to all peoples, particularly to groups outside the decolonization context. More seriously, the issue of self-determination remains linked to a deeply entrenched concept of state sovereignty which revolves around an artificial link between nations, states and territorial integrity. Given that the boundaries of identity and community are fluid and constantly shifting, this territorial model of sovereignty more often precipitates rather than accommodates claims to self-determination. We thus argue for the need to deterritorialize self-determination, which would place greater emphasis on human rights and democratic participation. It would also open up more possibilities to deal with self-determination claims in the context of alternative political arrangements, such as autonomy, federalism, multiculturalism or overlapping sovereignties.

Keywords:

• self-determination
• state sovereignty
• territorial integrity
• decolonization
• deterritorialization

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Alex Bellamy and the anonymous referees for their useful comments.

Notes

1 For more detailed definitions of self-determination, see Christine Bell and Kathleen Cavanaugh, ‘“Constructive Ambiguity” or Internal Self-Determination? Self-Determination, Group Accommodation, and the Belfast Agreement’, Fordham International Law Journal 22 (1999): 1350; Lloyd Brown-John, ‘Self-Determination, Autonomy and State Secession in Federal Constitutional and International Law’, South Texas Law Review 40 (1999): 593; Avner de-Shalt, ‘National Self-Determination: Political, Not Cultural’, Political Studies 44 (1996): 907; Ruth Gana, ‘Which “Self ”? Race and Gender in the Right to Self-Determination as a Pre-requisite to the Right to Development’, Wisconsin International Law Journal 14 (1995): 144; Ved Nanda, ‘Self-Determination and Secession under International Law’, Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 29 (2001): 307; Ediberto Roman, ‘Substantive Self-Determination: Democracy, Communicative Power and International Labour Rights: Reconstructing Self-Determination: The Role of Critical Theory in the Positivist International Law Paradigm’. University of Miami Law Review 53 (1999): 944–5.

2 See Deborah Cass, ‘Re-thinking Self-Determination: A Critical Analysis of Current International Law Theories’, Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce 18 (1992): 22; Gana, ‘Which “Self”?’, 145; Michael Kelly, ‘Political Downsizing: The Re-emergence of Self-Determination, and the Movement Toward Smaller, Ethnically Homogeneous States’, Drake University Law Review 47 (1999): 217–18; Michael Glennon, ‘International Law under Fire: Self-Determination and Cultural Diversity’, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs Journal 27, no. 2 (2003): 75.

3 Such groups might well consider themselves to be occupied or under colonial rule. The point is that these groups do not fall into the traditionally recognized categories of peoples entitled to exercise a right to self-determination.

4 See Bell and Cavanaugh, ‘“Constructive Ambiguity’ or Internal Self-Determination?', 1351; Cass, ‘Re-thinking Self-Determination’, 21–2; Kelly, ‘Political Downsizing’, 224.

5 See, for instance, Viva Ona Bartkus, The Dynamic of Secession (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Aleksandar Pavkovic and Peter Radan, ‘In Pursuit of Sovereignty and Self-Determination: Peoples, States and Secession in the International Order’, Macquarie Law Journal 3 (2003): 1–12.

6 Terry Eagleton, ‘Nationalism and the Case of Ireland’, New Left Review 234 (1999): 44; James Mayall, ‘Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Self-determination’, Political Studies 47 (1999): 477.

7 Michael Freeman, ‘Democracy and Dynamite: The Peoples’ Right of Self-Determination', Political Studies 44 (1996): 747.

8 Antonio Cassese, Self-Determination of Peoples: A Legal Appraisal (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 32; Freeman, ‘Democracy and Dynamite’, 747; Mayall, ‘Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Self-determination’, 477.

9 Kelly, ‘Political Downsizing’, 214.

10 Cassese, Self-Determination of Peoples, 24; Betty Miller Unterberger, ‘The United States and National Self-Determination: A Wilsonian Perspective’, Presidential Studies Quarterly 26 (1996): 929.

11 See Michael Kryukov, ‘Self-Determination from Marx to Mao’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 19 (1996): 370–1; Cass, ‘Re-thinking Self-Determination’, 25; Kelly, ‘Political Downsizing’, 243.

12 Cited in Miller Unterberger, ‘The United States and National Self-Determination’, 930.

13 Henry Steiner and Philip Alston, eds, International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 972; see also Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (London: John Murray, 2001), 20–1. More recently, the US government has distinguished between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ forms of self-determination (Andrew Huff, ‘Indigenous Land Rights and the New Self-determination’, Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 16 2005: 317, citing US government documents), as has the Canadian Supreme Court. Reference re Secession of Quebec 1998 2 SCR 217, at 218.

14 Valerie Epps, ‘The New Dynamics of Self-Determination’, ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law 3 (1997): 433; Mayall, ‘Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Self-determination’, 476.

15 See Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 92–6.

16 UN Charter, Article 1.2; Barry Carter and Phillip Trimble, International Law Selected Documents (Aspen, CO: Aspen Law & Business, 1995), 2.

17 Cass, ‘Re-thinking Self-Determination’, 28.

18 Kelly, ‘Political Downsizing’, 216.

19 See Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 1970, Advisory Opinion, 1971, I.C.J. 16 (21 June); Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, 1975, I.C.J. 12 (16 October); Frontier Dispute case (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), Judgement, 1986, I.C.J. 3 (10 January); East Timor (Portugal v Australia), Judgement, 1995, I.C.J. 90 (30 June); Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, 2004, I.C.J. 31 (9 July).

20 East Timor Case; Palestinian Wall Advisory Opinion.

21 Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 71.

22 Kelly, ‘Political Downsizing’, 244, 248; Martyn Rady, ‘Self-Determination and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 19 (1996): 383; Steiner and Alston, International Human Rights in Context, 982.

23 It should be noted that the Badinter Commission did identify a third legal category of self-determination, that where a group separates from a state with the state's acceptance or because the state itself disintegrates (European Community Arbitration Committee, Conference on Yugoslavia, Opinion No. 1, 1992, I.L.M. 31:1494, 3).

24 Brown-John, ‘Self-determination, Autonomy and State Secession’, 592; Hurst Hannum, ‘Symposium on the Future of International Human Rights: The Right of Self-determination in the Twenty-First Century’, Washington & Lee Law Review 55 (1998): 776; Kelly, ‘Political Downsizing’, 216; Mayall, ‘Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Self-determination’, 491.

25 Cass, ‘Re-thinking Self-Determination’, 33; Rady, ‘Self-Determination and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia’, 380.

26 Robert McCorquodale, ‘Human Rights and Self-Determination’, in The New World Order: Sovereignty, Human Rights and the Self-Determination of Peoples, ed. Mortimer Sellers (Oxford: Berg, 1996), 9.

27 See, for instance, R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press); Paul Keal, European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 36.

28 Edward Canuel, ‘Nationalism, Self-Determination, and Nationalist Movements: Exploring the Palestinian and Quebec Drives for Independence’, Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 20 (1997): 90.

29 Canuel, ‘Nationalism, Self-Determination, and Nationalist Movements’, 90; see also Nanda, ‘Self-Determination and Secession under International Law’, 308.

30 Fred Halliday, 1990, ‘The Sixth Great Power: On the Study of Revolution and International Relations’, Review of International Studies 16, no. 3 (1990): 207.

31 Elie Kedourie, ‘A New International Disorder’, in The Expansion of International Society, ed. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 349.

32 Maivân Clech Lâm, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Conception of Their Self-Determination in International Law', in Law and Moral Action in World Politics, ed. Cecelia Lynch and Michael Loriaux (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 207, 214.

33 Stanley Hoffmann, Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of an Ethical International Politics (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1981), 33.

34 See Nicholas P. Higgins, Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion: Modernist Visions and the Invisible Indian (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004).

35 See Margaret Moore, ‘On National Self-determination’, Political Studies 45 (1997): 900, 903; Joshua Castellino, ‘Territory and Identity in International Law: The Struggle for Self-Determination in the Western Sahara’, Millennium 28 (1999): 527–9.

36 Martin Griffith, ‘Self-Determination, International Society and World Order’, Macquarie Law Journal 3 (2003): 6.

37 Gerry J. Simpson, ‘The Diffusion of Sovereignty: Self-Determination in the Post-Colonial Age’, in The New World Order: Sovereignty, Human Rights and the Self-Determination of Peoples, ed. Mortimer Sellers (Oxford: Berg, 1996), 48.

38 See Anthony Burke, ‘Against the New Internationalism’, Ethics and International Affairs 19, no. 2 (2005): 73–98.

39 Like, for instance, Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 2–3.

40 Naeam Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference (New York: Routledge, 2004), 121.

41 Ibid., 189.

42 Simpson, ‘The Diffusion of Sovereignty’, 51.

43 Jennifer E. Dalton, ‘Aboriginal Self-Determination in Canada: Protections Afforded by the Judiciary and Government’, Canadian Journal of Law and Society 21 (2006): 13; Huff, ‘Indigenous Land Rights and the New Self-Determination’, 318; Lâm, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Conception of Their Self-Determination in International Law,' 206–8, 226.

44 See S. James Ananya, ‘Divergent Discourses about International Law, Indigenous Peoples, and Rights over Lands and Natural Resources: Towards a Realist Trend’, Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 16 (2005): 237–58; Shane Greene, ‘Intellectual Property, Resources, or Territory?’ in Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights, ed. Mark Philip Bradley and Patrice Petro (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 244–5; Huff, ‘Indigenous Land Rights and the New Self-Determination’.

45 James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 9.

46 See Scott Bennett, ‘Federalism and Aboriginal Affairs’, Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (1988): 18–20; James O'Reilly, ‘Indian Land Claims in Quebec and Alberta’, in Governments in Conflict? Provinces and Indian Nations in Canada, ed. J.A. Long and M. Boldt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 147; and Ted Robert Gurr, ‘The Politics of Aboriginal Land Rights and Their Effects on Australian Resource Development’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 31 (1985): 486.

47 Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 91.

48 Robert McCorquodale, ‘Human Rights and Self-Determination’, in The New World Order: Sovereignty, Human Rights and the Self-Determination of Peoples, ed. Mortimer Sellers (Oxford: Berg, 1996), 9.

49 Simpson, ‘The Diffusion of Sovereignty’, 54.

50 Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 148.

51 Cass, ‘Re-thinking Self-Determination’, 24.

52 Huff, ‘Indigenous Land Rights and the New Self-determination’, 316, 317.

53 Ibid., 317.4

54 Dalton, ‘Aboriginal Self-determination in Canada’, 12.

55 See Ananya, ‘Divergent Discourses’; Dalton, ‘Aboriginal Self-determination in Canada’, 12; Huff, ‘Indigenous Land Rights and the New Self-determination’.

56 Ananya, ‘Divergent Discourses’, 238.

57 See Simpson, ‘The Diffusion of Sovereignty’, 49–51.

58 William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 157; idem, Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox, extended edn (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 215–7.

59 Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, 136.

60 William E. Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 51, 155; Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, xv–xix; idem, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 195–6.

61 David Campbell, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 109, 166; Simpson, ‘The Diffusion of Sovereignty’, 52–3.

62 John Mearsheimer, ‘Shrink Bosnia to Save It’, New York Times, 31 March 1993, A23.

63 Didier Bigo, ‘Guerres, conflits, transnational et territoire’, Cultures et Conflits 21–2 (1996): 2.

64 Griffith, ‘Self-Determination, International Society and World Order’, 48.

65 James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 4.

66 Suzan Balz, ‘A Country within a Country: Redrawing Borders on the Post-colonial Sovereign State’, Michigan Journal of Race & Law 2 (1997): 654.

67 See ibid., 654.

68 Inayatullah and Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference, 190.

69 Ibid., 214.

70 Cass, ‘Re-thinking Self-determination’, 23; Halim Morris, ‘Self-Determination: An Affirmative Right or Mere Rhetoric?’, ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law 4 (1997): 201.