Doctrine of Right for Self-Determination and Legal Entitlement to Democratic Governance - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages Self-determination has developed from its modest beginnings in the United Nations Charter to “a legal entitlement of decolonization and to a free-standing human right” (Higgins 1995: 115). The roots of self-determination lay in the need to change from intolerance and injustice expressed through violence and displacement of people, to justice and equality as basic human rights. Some of the worst cases of ethnic cleansing took place during the Second World War.

The various examples of destructive nationalism included the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust, followed by mass killing of gypsies or Romas and other groups, mass deportation to clean out unpopular ethnic groups, the Potsdam Agreement in 1945 between Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom authorizing the expulsion of some fifteen million people of German ethnic origin who had been citizens in different parts of Europe, and other large-scale forced transfers during the same period of turmoil. A new international legal order based on pluralism and tolerance was developed. The International Bill of Human Rights emphasized the equality of all human beings “irrespective of national or ethnic origin – and also irrespective of race, religion, and gender” (Tomuschat 1992: 152).

States were responsible for securing human rights in their own domestic system, and their autonomy was understood as popular sovereignty. In article 21 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the authority of government would be based on the will of the people, which they will express through periodic, genuine, and fair voting procedures. “Consequently, democratic governance was an essential component – both a precondition and a right in itself” (Tomuschat 1992: 152). The right of peoples to self-determination was introduced in the Covenants mainly with decolonization as an aim. At the same time, the underlying rationale for self-determination is that of popular sovereignty based on people governing themselves.

The most important principle of international law is that of territorial integrity, the maintenance of the inherited State and of the population residing in that State. Changes can be introduced only when there are justified claims of self-determination, and the international community has to clarify for whom the principle of self-determination applies. Therefore it is essential that international procedures are available to settle such claims (Tomuschat 1992). While it is universally accepted that people have a right to self-determination, the scope of its application continues to be controversial because of several differing views existing about it.

Self-determination is claimed as a right; it gives all people the right to freely determine “without external interference their political status, and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development” (Tomuschat 1992: 153). Every state has the duty to respect this right in compliance with the provisions of the Charter. ...Download file to see next pages Read More