ABSTRACT
While the history of self-determination is rich and varied (Buchheit 1978; Casesse 1995; Hannum 1990) its practice in the context of the United Nations era has been beset with difficulties and inconsistencies (Sureda 1973). The attempted secessions of Katanga and Biafra, represent two of the instances where the emerging norm of self-determination came up for immediate challenge under evolving UN practice. If decolonization was a fundamental goal of the United Nations, self-determination was its conceptual framework and secession, its practical handmaiden. The force of the evolving norm of self-determination had already created a dispute between Portugal and the United Nations, and questions had also been raised about the definition of ‘colonial power’ in the context of what came to be referred to as the Belgian Thesis (discussed below) (Van Langenhove 1954: 83–4). Both challenges had a material issue underpinning them: if secession in the specific context of decolonization could be considered justifiable, what constitutes colonization? In other words would it be possible for an entity that has already ‘achieved’ self-determination through decolonization, to be able to exercise its rights once again on the grounds that the original self-determination was not truly self-determination? This debate was also influenced by the reservation entered by India to join Article 1 of the 1966 human rights covenants, discussed below.
