Do not take rights for granted
- about the Self-Determination principle
Hi, there! You are using a phone or your computer to read this story which randomly spammed either your social media accounts or your Medium app. Lucky me that I can use technology to write a journal for myself. To share my thoughts with you. To share experiences with all the others. To check facts and figures. To get informed and to act.
Lucky you that you can react. That you can contest. Repost. Spread. Express. And change.
How much time per day do you use your phone to connect with people around you? One, three, maybe 6 hours? The average time we spend on our phone daily is 3 hours and 15 minutes. Also, we pick up our phones 58 times per day. Quite challenging to stay far from the precious flux of information our modern device is continuously bringing towards us. But what about having a detox from the use of the internet? Let’s say for the next … 80 days. Exactly at this moment, now, your connection is lost. You cannot finish this article, you cannot reply to the 3 group chats on Whatsapp and the 4 conversations on Messenger, postponed since lunchtime. Moreover, your Instastory stopped uploading and for the next 79 days, 23 hours 58 minutes and 45 seconds you won’t be able to access the online world. What a mess! Your right to freedom of opinion and expression, “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (Article 19, UDHR) is “a bit” violated. Do you feel frustrated by this thought? How would you react if I told you that someone cut the connection and left you “in the dark”? Let’s say it was… your government.
Too many surreal assumptions, too many hypotheses to test and too many case scenarios, right? Forget it.
It has been approximately 80 days since the Indian government enforced a communication blackout on the Kashmir region, directly revoking its persisting political autonomy. This is only the derisory action taken from New Delhi to impede the Kashmiris to be autonomous and to peacefully enjoy their lives, as Article 370 of the Indian constitution was revoked in August 2019.
“Article 370 of the Indian constitution gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir — a state in India, located in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, and a part of the larger region of Kashmir, which has been the subject of dispute between India, Pakistan, and China since 1947 — conferring it with the power to have a separate constitution, a state flag and autonomy over the internal administration of the state” (Wiki source).
By the suspension of telecom services, communication, productivity and economy are altogether affected. By arresting hundreds of political leaders, civil activists, and former chef ministries, the volatile Valley of Kashmir, usually used as a political tool between India and Pakistan, is even more devastated. By closing schools and restricting access to health services, a spillover effect is created in the breach of Human Rights.
This week the chaos started to be repaired by restoring some of the phones connections, but nothing else more. The press is writing about, NGOs are trying to react, intergovernmental institutions are trying to secure human rights within the region. However, it is a fine line between imposing a set of rules set by the International Law and the practical context.
The Kashmiris situation raises up one of the most debatable concepts nowadays, namely “Self-determination”. Two days ago, the World Solidarity Forum’s conference, which took place in the Press Club Brussels , was used as a tool to facilitate discussions and increase awareness on the right of people to determine their own destiny. With Lucia Perucci (EU Representative for Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization — UNPO), Derwich Ferho (Kurdish Institute — Brussels), and Alla Aboudaka ( Founding Director of Access Advisors, human rights defender particularly working on the Kashmiri and Palestinian peoples’ right to self-determination), the audience — experts or simply curious people like me — were stimulated to reflect on the two different recent situations: (1) the axis Pakistan — Kashmir — India and (2)the axis Turkey — Kurdistan — Syria — Irak.
(1) Context explained by the Financial Times. Jammu and Kashmir received special rights after India’s independence in 1947, when the state was incorporated into Hindu-majority India rather than Muslim-majority Pakistan. But it remained a site of animosity. India and Pakistan have fought three bloody wars over the state since independence. Many Muslims in Indian Kashmir have long resented what they see as heavy-handed New Delhi rule. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP believes that the state’s autonomy has fueled terrorism in the region.Islamabad’s (capital of Pakistan) response is the biggest and potentially the most dangerous unknown. New Delhi alleges Pakistan uses terrorist proxies to wage war against India in the region
(2) Story in 100 words by BBC. Turkey considers the biggest militia in the Kurdish-led alliance a terrorist organisation. It says it is an extension of a Kurdish rebel group fighting in Turkey. On 9 October, Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels launched an offensive to create a 30km (20-mile) deep “safe zone” along the Syrian side of the border. It came after the withdrawal of US troops, who had relied on the Kurds to defeat the Islamic State group. The Kurds asked Syria’s government and its ally, Russia, to help stop the assault. Turkey and Russia subsequently agreed to take joint control of the border area.
A state is whatsoever not the sole possessor of sovereignty under international and domestic law. To better understand the principle of self-determination, many researchers and international actors acting in the name of respecting human rights are tackling the relationship between the sovereignty of people (of nations) and of a state, as an implementation of basic human rights.
“No other concept is as powerful, visceral, emotional, unruly, as steep in creating aspirations and hopes as self-determination.” (W. Danspeckgruber)
The main point of debate in Kashmiris’, Kurdish’ or other ethnic minorities’ independence within a state is not necessary the self-determination principle, but the legal criteria that determine which groups may claim the right to self-determination, and under what conditions. How can a stateless person exercise the right of self-determination within a state and how a state should react to this without oppressing or abusing human right?
Instruments protecting the right to self-determination
Mainly, a set of rules (charters, international conventions, resolutions, declarations) was established to grant access to people to the right to self-determination, used as a tool to reestablish international standards of human rights and democracy.
Starting with the Article 1(2) of the Charter of the United Nations, Articles 1 and 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and continuing with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide General Comment №12 on Self-Determination - Human Rights Committee, or the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, formal institutions enforce these “laws” which sometimes are simply not 100% fit for the turbulent conditions within a region, or are not easily implemented within uneven power and anarchic political structures.
At the same time, the role of international institutions played in mediating, solving or minimising the conflict and its victims is highly contested. In most of the cases, self-determination starts on the street level — following a bottom-up process of recognition.
At the European level, as regards European Law, “in the absence of specific Treaty provision on the right of Self-determination for a European people without a State in the territory of the EU, EU law does not forbid the exercise of its Right to Decide for a European people within the EU.” There are even numerous Treaty provisions that indicate that if such right were to be exercised, EU and its Member States would react positively to a new European State candidacy to join the EU. However, recent and consistent practice definitely does not point that way. It seems that “both as a collectively exercised human right and as a fundamental norm of International Law, EU recognizes the Right to Decide.” (Levrat, Antunes, Tusseau, Williams, 2018).
“If making people count is at the center of concern for human rights, it is relevant to take stock of what is at the center of human existence.”
The theoretical rights to which each of us is presumably entitled are primarily exercised in relationship with others through a shared sense of what is due each person, therefore, the suum cuique( “to each his own” or “may all get their due"). But, what is due each person depends on what is due others. Rights are not things by themselves but are constitutive fragments of human existence which shape the relationships that gather individuals together into the various clustered communities where they live, deliberate, work, and govern.
To have rights and freely exercise them can be easily taken from granted, being backed-up by the whole framework of the International Law, but when the law faces breaches, the simple life spent in dignity can be easily threatened.
If you manifest a higher interest in International Law or the two specific cases briefly presented above do not hesitate to check the following articles and academic papers:
- Self-Determination as a Human Right — C. Griffioen, Kennispunt REBO 2010
- Enforcing International Human Rights Law: Problems and Prospects
- The Legitimacy of Catalonia’s Exercise of its right to Decide — A Report by a Commission of International Experts.
- Sovereignty, Human Rights, and Self-Determination: The Meaning of International Law — Father Robert Araujo.
- Self-Determination and Secession Under International Law: The Cases of Kurdistan and Catalonia.
- Enforcement of International Law.
- Fundamental Rights Report 2018 — FRA Opinions
- “WE CAN’T COMPLAIN” — Turkey’s Continue Crackdown on Dissent over its Military Operation “Peace Spring” in Northeast Syria.
- Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
- Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
- Article 1(1), International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights
- Resolution 1803 (XVII) of 14 December 1962, ‘Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources’, UN General Assembly
- ILO Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, №169
- General Recommendation №21 on Right to Self-Determination, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
- Article 29, Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Article II, Resolution 260A(III) on the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, General Assembly
- Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States
- Article 20(1), African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights
