Jun 02 – The Right To Self-Determination – An Explanatory Guide
On 15th June, the SDGG will once again be appearing before the United Nation’s Committee of 24 in order to deliver a petition.
The group says that it felt that it was a good time to raise awareness on the issues surrounding self-determination and has therfore commissioned Dr Jamie Trinidad to prepare three short articles on the issue, the first of which is published below with the subsequent two following over the next days.
Dr Jamie Trinidad is a Fellow and Tutor of Wolfson College, Cambridge and an Associate of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge. He is also a barrister at the Gibraltar law firm, Isolas. He specialises in the law of self-determination and international territorial disputes, and has accompanied the Gibraltar delegation to the UN as a legal advisor on a number of occasions.
THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION: AN EXPLANATORY GUIDE
I: SELF-DETERMINATION AS A MORAL AND POLITICAL IDEAL
There is no shortage of groups around the world claiming the right to self-determination. These include the Kurds, Palestinians, Chechens, Falkland Islanders, the Saharawi of the Western Sahara, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Quebecois (or at least the French-speaking population of Quebec), the Scots, the Catalans, the Basques and the Kosovars – to name only a few.
Not all these groups want the same thing. Some claim a right to secede – to break away – from an existing state, and to form their own state. This is what Kosovo has sought to achieve by declaring its independence from Serbia.
Some groups seek to break free from the control of a colonial or occupying power. This is what the Saharawi people want. Much of their territory has been occupied by Morocco since Spain, the colonial power, departed in the mid-1970s.
Some groups seek autonomy, or some other form of special treatment, within a state. This is what the majority of Scots seem intent on, now that independence is off the table, at least for the time being.
Self-determination is frequently claimed by, or on behalf of, the people of Gibraltar. Not all Gibraltarians are agreed on what the territory’s final political status should be – many want the maximum possible level of self-government under British rule; some would prefer integration with Britain; some believe independence is achievable and desirable; a tiny minority want some kind of political association with Spain. Despite such differences, most Gibraltarians share a strong intuitive sense of what self-determination entails: they wish to decide who governs them and how; they wish to ensure that distinctive aspects of their culture are preserved and respected; they do not wish to be dictated to by those from outside their community; in short, Gibraltarians want to be masters of their own destinies as individuals, and to have a meaningful say over how they shape their collective destiny as a community. Most Catalans and Palestinians would probably share these sentiments (and so, for that matter, would most Spaniards and Israelis).
The power of self-determination as a moral value or political ideal should not be underestimated. It inspired movements like the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence, and it has been invoked in countless political struggles since. However, if every group with a claim to self-determination were permitted freely to determine its political future, the results would be catastrophic. Existing states would splinter into tiny fragments, and the stability of the international system would be fatally undermined. The very existence of a coherent international system hinges on its capacity to regulate the tension between the competing – and often irreconcilable – ambitions of a multitude of political groups.
As a result, international legal rules have emerged which privilege the ambitions of certain groups over others. Within this system, it is not enough simply to aspire to self-determination, however worthy that aspiration may be. The practical implementation of self-determination at an international level depends in large part on whether a claim to self-determination can be justified in international law.
While Gibraltarian politicians are often accused of lapsing too easily into legal language, they can be forgiven for doing so when it comes to asserting the right of self-determination of their constituents in forums like the United Nations. International law is Gibraltar’s most powerful tool on the world stage. It provides a measure of protection against the arbitrary exercise of power, and it provides a widely recognised basis for ensuring that Gibraltar’s political future lies in the hands of the Gibraltarians themselves. The next section will explain what is meant by the notion that the Gibraltarians have a legal right – as distinct from a merely moral or political claim – to self-determination.
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