ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the standard of civilization persisted as a discourse and mode of thinking in the United Nations (UN), which was tasked to oversee an Act of Free Choice by the West Papuans. The standard of civilization was constructed by nineteenth-century international lawyers to justify denying equal legal standing to peoples they deemed less “civilized.” Although no longer invoked explicitly at the UN, conceptions of “civilization” colored the political debates regarding West Papua’s postcolonial status, cited paradoxically by different states to justify competing positions regarding its people’s right to self-determination.
