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international law was to allow the former
colonies that existed before
World War II to have a say in their future. Some felt that after
decolonization the right to self-determination should apply only to states and not to peoples, and to be circumscribed by the principles of
territorial integrity and
non-intervention. Territorial integrity can only be applied to prevent the cessation of integral parts of a state, and does not apply to decolonisation. It is clear that a colony cannot affect the territorial integrity of a country of which she does not form part. Many of the newly independent former colonies faced secessionist and
irredentist movements and therefore there was an international consensus that self-determination did not apply to these movements. UN Resolution 1514(XV) was adopted and guarantees the right to self-determination of all peoples.
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 committed the idea of the right for self-determination to the body of international protocol. In essence, all people reserve the right to seek self-determination to address a lack of proper representation or oppression from any given government.
There is tension between the concept of self-determination and that of territorial integrity. The prevailing force of the principle of territorial integrity was exemplified by the adherence to the principle of uti possidetis during the decolonization process (that is, the retaining of colonial borders in the birth of independent nations). This conflict has been resolved in practice by defining the notion of "people" entitled to self-determination as persons living in a particular geographic area within a nation-state rather than persons sharing a common culture or language. Hence, self-determination as it is understood in the early 21st century does not generally promote the political aspirations of oppressed ethnic minorities.
Wilson's ideas of self-determination originated in his Southern heritage and sympathies. His favorite movie was The Birth of a Nation, and his Democratic Party beliefs and personal ties were steeped in Southern pride and resentment of Northern power. Hence Southern interpretations of States-Rights directly led to Wilson's ideas of self-determination. Many have criticized both concepts, however, for promoting secession and division over unity. Further, the key question is at what level do populations have the right to self-determination and the formation or preservation of a state, the empowerment of a local majority, and the formation of a local minority. In the United States, southern states' rights to determine their own destiny during the Civil War and Civil Rights era were held to be not absolute, especially since significant minorities there were oppressed. In Europe after World War I, many of the former Empires destroyed in that war were broken up into ethnic states which themselves were amalgamations of peoples containing their own minorities, in Yugoslavia, the former Russian and Austro-Hungarian provinces, and in the Middle East. In Palestine, Jewish immigrants would claim self-determination to justify the creation of the state of Israel in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire, just as Palestinians would later claim independence as Palestine.
Lenin on Self-Determination
Though the Maoist communist movement would later embrace self-determination more wholeheartedly, Vladimir Lenin supported the concept of the right of a culturally distinct grouping to self-determination, albeit within the framework of proletarian internationalism and, as it turned out in the policy of the Soviet Union, more in theory than in practice. The policy of Korenizatsiya seemed to indicate a sincere belief on the part of Lenin national self-determination. However, Lenin also assumed that the populations of the ethnically diverse soviet republics were voluntarily confederated with Russia in the form of the Soviet Union. By the time the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, significant numbers of national minorities were defecting to the Nazi side in the hope of being allowed to create their own sovereign states. #redirect
In regard to a long running argument going on between Rosa Luxembourg, right-wing tendencies within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, and the Bolsheviks, Lenin said:
...[T]he tendency of every national movement is towards the formation of national states, under which these requirements of modern capitalism are best satisfied. ... [T]he national state is typical and normal for the capitalist period. Consequently, if we want to grasp the meaning of self-determination of nations ... by examining the historico-economic conditions of the national movements, we must inevitably reach the conclusion that the self-determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and the formation of an independent national state. ...[It] would be wrong to interpret the right to self-determination as meaning-anything but the right to existence as a separate state." -Lenin, [What Is Meant By The Self-Determination of Nations?]
Australia
Recently (2003 onwards), self-determination has become a topic of some debate in Australia in relation to Aborigines (indigenous Australians). In the 1980s, the Aboriginal community approached the Federal Government and requested the right the run their own communities. This encompassed basic local government functions, ranging from land dealings and management of community centres to road maintenance and garbage collection, as well as setting education programs and standards in their local schools. The Federal Government assented (with certain conditions) and a central Aboriginal administrator called ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission) was appointed and constituted to allocate and distribute funds to the various Aboriginal communities and to liaise with the Federal Government regarding the welfare of Aborigines areas that requirement improvement and/or funding. Some argued that this was a form of self-determination or were, at the very least, initial step towards self-determination because the Aborigines were becoming a 'self-contained' people within Australia. In addition, Aborigines had recently acquired native-title land rights following the Marbo decision of the High Court of Australia in the late 1980s. However, others have aruged that this was not sufficient to be described as self-determination, simply because the Federal Government retained and at times exercised its power over the Aboriginal communities and ATSIC. It would seem (although this view may be disputed) that a people's independent law-making power may be the great dividing line between self-determination and merely "steps towards" self-determination.
The reason that the distinction came into dispute was because ATSIC was surrounded by contraversy in 2004-2005. There were allegations of mismanagement and a few rumours circulated about substantial amounts of money that had "gone missing" or been given to third parties under unusual circumstances. Furthermore, a senior member of ATSIC was accused of rape and a trial followed. In any case, the Federal Government terminated ATSIC's commission and reassumed full control of Aboriginal welfare and allocating/distributing funding. In terms of self-determination, this would be regarded as a backward step. But some in the Australian Federal Government have attempted to use this "mess" to argue that self-determination is destined to fail or not a viable option. However, those who believe in self-determination argue that the establishment of ATSIC and so on was not really self-determination and therefore, we should not look at recent events to dismiss the possibility of self-determination working in the future.
Hence, self-determination has been held to be an example of an advancement of the fundamental political rights of politically bounded 'peoples' at work, but also as an example of an abstract theory that has been implemented in contexts with sometimes severe political and national conflict.
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See also
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