ABSTRACT
The concept of self-determination has become closely linked with the nature and scope of the international community. The International Covenants on Human Rights define self-determination as the right of peoples to determine their status and to pursue their economic, social, and cultural developments without foreign interference. The circumstances under which the exercise of a right to self-determination has been possible have been both domestic and international. An emphasis on the national unit has been evident in the claims for self-determination, but different interpretations of the concept of self-determination reflect a conflict in the meaning assigned to national status with a resulting clash between competing national interests. Self-determination has continued to mean the right of subjugated peoples, as nations, to liberation. National self-determination became an assertion of a people with a national identity of their right to determine their own sovereign status.
