ABSTRACT
It is generally agreed that peoples have a right to self-determination. The principle is present in UN and other legal documents as a moral 1 or as a legal right (see also Chapter 17). But we must immediately distinguish between the right to internal self-determination and the right to external self-determination. The right to external self-determination is the right to own a sovereign state. It can apply to a population that already owns a sovereign state, but also to peoples that do not yet have one. In the latter case, it involves the violation of the territorial integrity of the encompassing state. It can take the form of secession when the people creates its own state, or association if the people associates itself with a neighbouring state. Internal self-determination is in general defined as the right for a people to develop itself socially, economically and culturally within an encompassing state and to determine its political status within that state. This is how the notion is defined in the UN Charter (UN 1945) and in the Declaration on Friendly Relations among States (UN 1970). This is also how it is defined in the Declaration on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples (UN 2007). In this chapter, I focus essentially on the right to internal self-determination and its connection with secession. It is relevant to issues of external self-determination, because one of the main reasons for allowing unilateral secession to take place is the violation of the right to internal self-determination. If the encompassing state is not willing to grant internal self-determination to its component nations, this for the UN can count as an injustice and seems to justify a unilateral remedial right to secede. So in general, UN documents assert that peoples have a primary right to internal self-determination and have a remedial right to secession or external self-determination. Unilateral secession can be justified in the case of colonies, oppressed peoples and when the state does not secure internal self-determination for its internal minorities (see Chapter 17). 2
