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1. Scylla and Charybdis: The Self-Determination of Peoples Versus the Territorial Integrity of States

Author:
A. Kagramanov
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
East View Information Services
Abstract:
LIKE Odysseus, who fell into the clutches of Scylla after escaping the whirlpool Charybdis, countries that have escaped the threat of losing territory as a result of foreign invasion are facing the threat of disintegration from within. The ancient epic by the great Homer about the adventures of the hero Odysseus, who finds himself between a rock and a hard place, involuntarily comes to mind when considering the perennial international legal dilemma about the relationship between the principle of the territorial integrity of states and the right of peoples and nations to self-determination. As Yekaterina Narochnitskaya rightly notes, self-determination, like freedom, has “its limits and its paradox.” “Just as unlimited freedom destroys itself, so the right to self-determination, elevated to an absolute, risks depriving everyone and everything of self-determination, the inevitable outcome being a chain reaction of countless conflicting expressions of will leading to a general collapse.”1 Experience shows that the principle of self-determination is subject to double standards and often politically exploited by certain groups to achieve their economic, social, ethnocratic, religious, and other narrow, sometimes purely selfish goals that contradict the original purpose of this vital international legal and (in most cases) constitutional provision. And it is for these untoward purposes that the artificial “collision” of this principle with the principle of territorial integrity is often used.
Topic:
International Law, Law, Self Determination, Conflict, Peace, and Territory
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Self-Determination and Sea-Level Rise

Author:
Barbara Buckinx, Matthew Edbrooke, and Rana Ibrahem
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Princeton University
Abstract:
This report summarizes a workshop held jointly by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University (LISD) and the Liechtenstein Mission to the United Nations, New York, between September and December 2020. The workshop and this report are products of LISD’s Project on Self-Determination, Environment, and Migration. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop was divided into four seminars, taking place via video teleconference and under the Chatham House Rule.
Topic:
Environment, Migration, Self Determination, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Gender, Law, and Security: Selected Student Research from the Project on Gender and the Global Community, 2019-2020

Author:
Barbara Buckinx, Beth English, Jake Gutman, Seoyoung Hong, Mikaylah Ladue, Katrin Lewis, and Liza Paudel
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Princeton University
Abstract:
Who is the ‘self’ in self-determination? Feminist scholars and activists have long noted that, when self-determination means primarily non-interference in the internal affairs of a governing body, practices and traditions through which men dominate women can flourish. In order to fully realize the promise of the concept of self-determination, it is therefore best understood in both collective and individual forms. Women across the world have long sought to influence and shape the nature of their own lives, with a gendered understanding of power and how hierarchies of power are not only created and maintained, and perpetuate inequalities, but also how they can potentially be reorganized and remade. In this spirit, the research agenda and related activities of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University’s Project on Gender in the Global Community (GGC) uses gender as a primary lens for analysis and starting point for broader dialogues about sustainable development, state building, economic and political participation, negotiation and mediation, peace, and security. The GGC Student Fellows Program, inaugurated during the 2017-18 academic year, has been an integral complement to this work. Building on student interest in the GGC project and modeled on the successful student fellows program organized as part of LISD’s Project on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations (PORDIR), a dedicated student cohort of Princeton students ranging from first-year undergraduates to Ph.D. candidates and postdocs, were selected through a competitive application process. Over the course of the 2019-20 fellowship year, GGC fellows pursued independent, academically rigorous research, a sampling of which is presented in this publication. In December 2019, they presented their projects alongside peers from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs during a joint student research day. The papers in this volume include the written output of this independent work, which represents a variety of disciplines and methodologies and reflect the range of work undertaken by GGC students throughout the year.
Topic:
Governance, Law, Self Determination, Influence, and Gender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Handbook on the Prevention and Resolution of Self-Determination Conflicts

Author:
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Princeton University
Abstract:
The Handbook on the Prevention and Resolution of Self-Determination Conflicts is the latest product of a long and fruitful collaboration between the Mission of Liechtenstein to the United Nations, New York, and the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University to assess the relationship of self-determination to conflict. The Handbook includes four case studies: Aceh, Bougainville, Mindanao, and Northern Ireland, in addition to setting out guidelines specifically aimed at those working to prevent and resolve self-determination conflicts. The handbook was conceived chiefly as the result of two meetings on self-determination held jointly by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and the Liechtenstein Mission to the UN: “Models of Self-Governance as Tools to Promote Peace and Stability in Europe,” held in March 2016, in Triesenberg, Liechtenstein, and “Self-Determination in Conflict Prevention and Resolution,” held in December 2018, in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A. In these meetings, participants discussed the relationship between self-determination and conflict, as well as ways that self-determination conflicts may be prevented and resolved. These discussions drew on the tensions and links between self-determination, minority rights, autonomy and self-governance, and mediation, all of which are key elements of the handbook.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Diplomacy, Governance, Self Determination, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Post-Colonial Legality and Human Rights

Author:
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR), Rutgers University School of Law
Abstract:
Autonomy and self-determination of all individuals cannot be realized and sustained unless true within every person. Enslavement and dehumanization remain true of citizens of imperial nations if it remains true for colonized persons and peoples. Join us for a timely lecture exploring the contradictions between stated commitments to human rights and actions in Western and post-colonial societies.
Topic:
Human Rights, Imperialism, Post Colonialism, Self Determination, and Autonomy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Peace as a Human Right: Outlook of the Relationships between Human Rights and Peace from the 21st Century | Bir İnsan Hakkı Olarak Barış: İnsan Hakları/Barış İlişkisinin 21. Yüzyıldan Görünümü

Author:
Fatma Akkan Güngör and Zehra Aksu
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Novus Orbis: Journal of Politics & International Relations
Institution:
Department of International Relations, Karadeniz Technical University
Abstract:
The 20th century has been regulated with a conservative principle due to the fact that states could not be able to solve their national and international problems on their own, and therefore should embrace the concept of global cooperation. That is the reason why state sovereignty has been the subject of many discussions until today. When peace emerged as a human right in the form of solidarity, it was taken into consideration in the literature together with the concept of humanitarian intervention. Furthermore, after that, its validity was discussed in the context of state sovereignty. While all these discussions are taking place, many philosophers/academics, who focus on the problematic of state right or human right and whose ideas evolve to peace studies over the inevitability of wars and reach a stalemate between the subject or state over the right of intervention, bring the old concepts back to the agenda and produce new ideas for the new order. Based on the question of whether peace should be in the system or within the nation, the main problematic in this era is whether a society that includes the entire universe or a system in which the sovereignty principles of states will continue and whether a system, in which wars are also possible, will be accepted as "right" by the subject. | 20. yüzyıl devletler için ulusal ve uluslararası sorunlarını tek başlarına çözemeyecekleri ve bu nedenle küresel işbirliğine yanaşmaları düzleminde muhafazakar ilkeyle düzenlenmiş ve günümüze kadar geçen sürede devlet egemenliği birçok tartışmaya konu olmuştur. Barış, dayanışma türünde bir insan hakkı olarak ortaya çıktığında literatürde insani müdahale kavramı ile birlikte ele alınmış ve sonrasında devlet egemenliği bağlamında geçerliliği tartışılmıştır. Tüm bu tartışmalar yaşanırken devlet hakkı mı insan hakkı mı sorunsalına odaklanan ve savaşların kaçınılmazlığı üzerinden barış çalışmalarına evrilen ve müdahale hakkı üzerine özne mi devlet mi çıkmazında kalan birçok düşünür, eski kavramları yeniden gündeme taşımakta ve yeni düzene yeni düşünceler üretmektedir. Barışın sistemde mi ulusta mı olması gerektiği sorusu üzerinden hareketle ana sorunsal, bu çağda tüm evreni içine alacak bir toplumun mu yoksa devletlerin egemenlik ilkelerinin devam edeceği ve savaşların da olası olduğu bir sistemin mi özne tarafından doğru kabul edileceğidir.
Topic:
Human Rights, International Cooperation, Sovereignty, Self Determination, Humanitarian Intervention, and Peace
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Secessionist Conflict: A Happy Marriage between Norms and Interests?

Author:
Rafael Biermann
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This roundtable debates how norms, values, and interests are balanced and harmonized in a world of conflict. My contribution focuses on one specific policy field: secessionist conflict. Like Megan Bradley’s contribution on the international refugee regime,1 this essay takes a metaperspective and does not investigate any one specific case or actor.2 I assume a political science perspective, paying attention first to social norms (as standards of appropriate behavior), which encompass but go beyond legally codified norms of international law;3 and second to interests, whether they be national, group, personal, or other. My perspective here is a critical social constructivist one, investigating the dialectic relationship of norms, interests, and power. I introduce the concept of “norm selection” in a policy field, which offers choice within a cluster of competing norms. Finally, following Bernd Bucher’s call to bring back agency into what he terms international “norm politics,” this contribution prioritizes agency, arguing that it is actors with diverging interests who do the balancing of norms, values, and interests.4 This was one of the major insights we gained from the workshop preceding this roundtable.5 The central argument of my contribution is that the policy field of secessionist conflict is structured around a set of five rival norms, of which territorial integrity and self-determination form the core. This normative structure permits the parties involved in a secessionist conflict to select from a menu of norms those that best suit their interests. The selection displays remarkable regularities, indicating default positions for each type of actor. However, significant outlier cases signal that interests do not simply trump norms but that actors accord different values to those norms. This attribution is influenced by the dynamics of a normative environment in which norms rise and fall. In particular, since the Cold War ended, discourse as well as state practice have shifted away from the traditional taboo on secession toward more revisionist concepts, such as remedial secession or earned sovereignty, providing an opening for the secessionist wave that started with the breakup of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia. I present my argument in three steps. First, I introduce the above-mentioned cluster of norms that shape discourse and policies on secession, distinguishing the two core norms and the three circumjacent ones of noninterference, human rights, and democratic good governance. Second, I identify five major types of actors in secessionist conflicts and investigate how each balances those norms. Since this balancing is actor-specific and conforms to the interests that each pursues, I arrive at distinct default positions for each actor type. Whereas this analysis suggests that norms serve primarily as legitimation devices to advance the diverging interests of various actors, the last section discusses outlier cases where norms and interests do not match as presumed.
Topic:
International Law, Self Determination, Norms, and Secession
Political Geography:
Global Focus