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Importance Of Self-Determination; its inter-relationship with ‘individual’ Human Rights Self-Determination as a Human Right and its application to the Sikhs This paper identifies that self-determination claims are not just founded in international law but that self-determination is in fact a basic human right on which other human rights depend and whose implementation is a duty of the international community. Despite becoming a cornerstone of international law, some commentators contend that self determination claims are something purely within the realms of politics. In addition, there is the vilification of proponents of self-determination, often perpetrated by states like India, which results in self-determination activists being labelled extremists or even terrorists. Furthermore, this paper aims to provide the reasoned basis for the international community recognising and defending the application of self-determination to the Sikhs. By doing that the international community is not committing itself to any particular outcome – that is something for the Sikhs and the process of international law to determine – but it will take a principled stand based on the rule of law and that, in itself, will be a substantial contribution to resolving the Punjab conflict in a peaceful, just and lawful manner. Self-Determination is key to world peace The global reality of our times is that most of the armed conflicts at the moment are between groups in a state or between a group and the state - not between states themselves. Most of these conflicts involve both a “collective” struggle for freedom/liberation/autonomy but also systematic violations of “individual” human rights such as genocide and other crimes against humanity, such as extra-judicial killings, disappearances, torture, rape and illegal detention. Thus resolutions of these armed conflicts - and of those which are not yet armed conflicts - WILL depend on decisions concerning the right of self-determination; the nexus between the exercise of self-determination and respect for individual human rights should therefore be apparent to all (In India alone there are such conflicts in Kashmir, Panjab, Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and other regions). The importance of self-determination in the geo-political global landscape is especially crucial in South Asia which hosts the greatest concentration of self-determination based claims and the greatest risk of the use of weapons of mass destruction amid a nuclear weapons race in the region. The possibility of a humanitarian catastrophe has been widely recognised:
The future of world peace will depend on a proper treatment of these claims for collective rights. This paper will, inter alia, show how the international law of self-determination provides the essential key to peaceful conflict resolution. A UNESCO sponsored conference of legal experts held in Barcelona in 1998 concluded that self-determination, as a right that is exercised by democratic means would be a major contribution to the prevention and resolution of conflicts. It made clear that link with individual human rights and called upon the international community to act: “Peace cannot exist in states that lack legitimacy or whose governments threaten the lives or well being of a section of the population. The international community, its members and institutions have an obligation to act where international law, including human rights and especially the right to self-determination is violated” [ http:/www.unescoat.org]. Legal Obligations It is important to recognise that self-determination is now an established legal right and that all states are obliged to respect that right. Art.(3) of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 (ICESCR) provides that every State has
This paper will describe how self-determination has, especially since the establishment of the UN, been central to the development of international law. |
