Right to Self-Determination

The right to self-determination is the collective right of peoples to choose their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development. It requires that this choice be made freely, without external domination or coercion, but it does not automatically give every group a right to secede.

Legal foundation

The UN Charter, particularly Articles 1(2) and 55, identifies respect for the equal rights and self-determination of peoples as a purpose and principle of international cooperation. Common Article 1 of the two 1966 International Covenants declares that all peoples possess this right.

• The 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples made self-determination central to decolonisation.
• The 1970 Friendly Relations Declaration elaborated its exercise while protecting the territorial integrity of qualifying sovereign states.

Content and modes of exercise

Self-determination has both internal and external dimensions. Internal self-determination concerns participation in political life and pursuit of development within an existing state; external self-determination concerns a people's international political status.

• External self-determination may produce independence, free association, integration, or another political status freely chosen by the people.
• Peoples may pursue their development and dispose of their natural wealth and resources, subject to international law and international economic cooperation.
• The right belongs to peoples collectively, although identifying a distinct "people" outside the colonial context can be legally contested.

Relationship with territorial integrity

International law balances self-determination with the sovereign equality and territorial integrity of states. The Friendly Relations Declaration protects states that respect equal rights and self-determination and possess a government representing the whole people without discrimination.

• Self-determination therefore does not establish a general right of every ethnic, linguistic or religious group to unilateral secession.
• Decolonisation is its clearest external application; whether a right of remedial secession exists in other extreme circumstances remains unsettled in general international law.