ABSTRACT
The claim that minorities are entitled to secede from the States they inhabit by virtue o f the right to self-determination has become a source of inspiration for many minority groups in contemporary polities. By exercising the right to self-determination, peoples living under colonial or alien domination are entitled to break away from their colonial masters and to establish the form o f the State they wish to have. Secessionist rights campaigners argue that a section of a people living in an independent State by reason o f ethnic, religious or linguistic origins is also entitled to proclaim independence for a region and secede from that State. Minority groups in contemporary polities, it is argued, are trapped in arbitrarily created territories against their will. Their only way to self-expression lies on the road to secession. This is seen as the emancipation of ‘trapped minorities’ from the Westphalian model nation-State system. The argument goes on that “only by an act o f secession can a trapped minority exercise the right of self-determination” (for details see White, 1981:161). This is clearly an attempt to interpret selfdetermination in terms of ethnicity by challenging the legitimacy of the State-oriented approach.
