self-determination

Self-determination appears in Articles 1(2) and 55 of the UN Charter and in common Article 1 of the ICCPR and ICESCR, 1966. It was the legal basis of decolonisation, recognised in the General Assembly's Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, 1960. The ICJ has treated it as an obligation erga omnes (East Timor, 1995; Chagos advisory opinion, 2019).

Outside the colonial context, self-determination is usually “internal”: a right to participate in government within the existing State, not a right to secede. India's declaration to Article 1 of the ICCPR states that the right applies only to peoples under foreign domination, and not to sovereign independent States or a section of a people or nation.

Example

India's declaration on ratifying the ICCPR limits self-determination to peoples under foreign domination, ruling out a claim to secession.

In Indian law

• Article 1(2), UN Charter; Article 1, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966

See also

uti possidetis juris · erga omnes · sovereignty

Read more in the study notes

• Mediation: meaning, the mediator and essential characteristics (Alternative Dispute Resolution Systems)
• Stages of mediation, models of mediation and code of conduct for mediators (Alternative Dispute Resolution Systems)
• Human rights: meaning, nature and kinds (Human Rights Law and Practice)
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 (Human Rights Law and Practice)
• ICCPR: civil and political rights and their implementation (Human Rights Law and Practice)
• ICESCR: economic, social and cultural rights (Human Rights Law and Practice)