Sharing Dreams, Strengthening Visions: The Right to Self-Determination as a Resource for JustPeace

Abstract

The question of self-determination has re-entered the center stage of world affairs in the 21st century. While the right of self-determination in the 20th century was for most part clothed in legal language and reduced to a privilege of 'State-determination,' the events that the world has witnessed in Kosovo, South Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Burma, Syria over the last ten years indicate the peoples' increasing desire to recover their self-determining capacities. These emerging trends have created conditions for the 21st century to be a century of 'peoples-determination' that is based on their values, dreams and imagination. The primary reason for this research study comes from the awareness that an unrepresented peoples' perspective is largely missing from existing literature on self-determination affecting their future. This research will strengthen it by providing a perspective that critically analyzes the State system which has denied the right to self-determination of all peoples. This denial has been the source of protracted and violent conflicts; and by equating the language of self-determination to secession and State sovereignty, it has affectively reduced the capacity of self-determination as a resource for JustPeace.