> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.nationalism.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.nationalism.io/nationalism/self-determination-rights.md). # Self-determination rights Self-determination will likely become an increasingly important topic over the coming years. As a distinct group, self-determination is concerned with a population’s political status and how they can make decisions together and control their own future. The idea behind self-determination is simple - distinct groups should have the right to govern themselves and be free from the control and power of other groups. Each distinct group is able to decide themselves how they are going to be governed. Self-determination is recognised under international law and is reflected in treaties and UN instruments that recognise the right of peoples to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development. The purpose of self-determination is to protect distinct groups and their ability to govern themselves and control their own futures. ## **Why are self-determination rights important?** Self-determination rights are important because distinct groups often have things they want to preserve, protect and pass on to future generations. These may include their culture, language, heritage, institutions, historical memory, their way of life and their own continuity as a distinct ancestral population. A useful way to understand this is through the idea of group boundaries. Every meaningful group has some kind of boundary that determines who belongs, who participates, what the group exists to protect and what rules or values hold it together. These boundaries can help to simply reflect the fact that a group has a particular identity, purpose or shared life that its members want to preserve. These general principles apply to nations and peoples. A distinct people may want to preserve its language, culture, religion, legal traditions, historical memory, ancestral continuity, political institutions or relationship to a homeland. If another group gains control over its political future, the original group may lose the ability to protect these things. Its schools, laws, public symbols, land use, migration rules, cultural institutions and political priorities may gradually be shaped by others instead. Self-determination therefore gives these nations the ability to set collective boundaries around the things it considers most important. These boundaries may concern territory, citizenship, political membership, language, cultural preservation, land rights, education, religious freedom, local autonomy or control over institutions. Without some form of self-determination, a distinct group may be unable to preserve its continuity or govern itself according to its own values. This is especially important for groups with a long historical connection to a particular homeland. If a people’s culture, heritage and collective identity developed in that place over many generations, then political control over that homeland may be central to its survival as a distinct group. For indigenous peoples, historic nations, national minorities and other long-rooted communities, self-determination can help protect against absorption, domination or loss of continuity. So the premise and logic underlying self-determination is simple. Groups ranging from small to large should be able to govern themselves and make their own decisions. Self-determination itself is focussed on distinct groups and how those groups are able to form communities and societies to protect their continuity and way of life. ## **Internal & external self-determination** Internal and external self-determination are two terms that are mentioned across a number of online resources. The distinction between them is that they are based on where the right is being exercised and what it seeks to change. Internal self-determination means a group of people that pursue their political, economic, social and cultural development within an existing state. External self-determination means a group of people that are looking to determine their international political status in relation to other states, most notably in colonial or occupied contexts. ## **Problems with applying internal self-determination** Internal self-determination is sometimes communicated as a right that can help to protect everyone’s ability to participate in government, have political representation and to have equal rights with non-discrimination. However the problem that exists with applying equal rights across all individuals is what can happen as a result of new groups being given voting rights within existing nation states. Equal political participation alone does not fully resolve questions around collective continuity. The demographics of a new group could become increasingly hard to influence and manage due to rates of immigration and emigration or due to differences in the rates of reproduction and death. The new group could eventually have a growing amount of voting power in the nation state and they may end up having an increasing amount of influence in politics and the society’s culture. Over the long term new groups might even replace the historical population. In these situations the historical population is losing their self-determination, this is because the interests and preferences of these other groups could be becoming the more dominant force over time. If the historical population no longer wants to be influenced by this external group, is it then fair to create two separate states due to the mistake of letting this new group into the country? This isn’t compelling as a fair outcome. The new group wouldn’t have been let into the country in the first place without the invitation from the historical group. Yet now they might end up receiving their own land and form a separate nation state against the will of the historical population. This is the problem with applying self-determination on the basis that everyone should have the ability to participate in politics. If this approach is adopted it means demographics will play a leading role in who actually governs a nation over the long term. Historical populations could lose their self-determination due to a loss of voting power and then be replaced with new groups over time. Eventually giving many migrants citizenship with rights to participate in politics does not always lead to optimal or desirable outcomes. Ongoing demographic change could result in entire populations and cultures being replaced over time due to an approach where all migrants are able to eventually receive citizenship and voting rights. If this approach was adopted at scale it could reduce global diversity over the long term due to the replacement of entire ancestral groups and cultures. The historical populations may have never wanted this to happen. The important question to then answer is: within each nation state which group’s self-determination is more important and why? Which group’s continuity needs to be better protected? I would personally propose that historically rooted ancestral groups and distinct societies with long-developed cultural and political institutions are the two most compelling population groupings that should be considered when applying self-determination rights. ## **Protecting distinct ancestries** Ancestry refers to someone’s descent and origin. A group of people might share a similar genetic ancestry due to their shared lineage across many generations. Groups that share a similar ancestry can have genetic adaptations that make them visibly distinct, including physical traits such as height, facial features, bone structure and skin colour. These ancestral groups may want to protect their continuity as a distinct group. One of the most reliable ways for them to do that is to ensure they have self-determination in their own homeland from which they originated. Ancestrally based self-determination is a compelling way to support the continuity of all ancestral groups across the world. It should help with preventing external groups from having a negative influence on the ancestral populations continuity as a group. Self governance could help with ensuring that people within their group are prioritised, which can make it more likely that their group has sufficient access to homes, food, education and other public services to better protect their livelihoods and continuity as a distinct group. Protecting each group with a distinct ancestral background is a compelling way to more reliably protect human diversity across the world. ## **Protecting distinct societies** Beyond protecting distinct ancestries it is also reasonable to expect that each distinct society will want to protect their livelihoods and continuity. A distinct society is one that could have developed its own culture and heritage over many generations. Land might have been developed and infrastructure would have likely been built. A distinct society could have been developed by one or multiple ancestral groups from different ancestral backgrounds. And those ancestral groups may already have an ancestral homeland elsewhere. The groups that actually built the society benefit from right to self-determination rights as a more reliable way for them to protect their way of life and the heritage and culture they have developed over many generations. It is the distinct group that built the society that will have the closest connection to the culture and heritage that now exists. They will also have the most experience with how the society has been governed to create and sustain the lifestyle and prosperity that has been achieved. ## **Distinct ancestries vs distinct societies** Protecting a distinct ancestry will often mean protecting both the group’s ancestry and the society they have built in their own homeland. In comparison, protecting a distinct society is more concerned with protecting the society itself, but this will often mean protecting the self-determination of the distinct ancestral population that actually built that society. It is more compelling that the self-determination rights of a distinct ancestral group in their own homeland should take precedent over protecting a distinct society. The distinct ancestral group in their own homeland has nowhere else to go. However this precedent does raise the issues that can exist around handling historical outcomes such as due to colonisation. As one example, the British colonised Australia and created their own distinct society. The Aboriginals are the indigenous population that inhabited that land before colonisation. Let’s imagine the Aboriginals wanted to pursue self-determination in their homeland and they also wanted to take back custody over the land that was taken from them historically. Would it be fair to ask all of the British settlers that colonised the country to immediately leave? Not really, but this obviously needs more context. If British people had just colonised Australia in a recent period such as in the last ten to twenty years it would be much more reasonable to just ask them to leave. They likely haven’t created a distinct society with its own culture and heritage and it would also be more likely that a more limited amount of infrastructure and land had been developed. In reality, the settler groups have now been there for hundreds of years and built up a larger society, which makes it more complex to handle the situation of the Aboriginals pursuing self-determination. The more time that has passed the more likely it is that significant efforts have been made to build infrastructure and to develop land. A unique culture and heritage could have also been established after many generations of building up that society. Although it is complex to suddenly ask a large population to leave a country and their society this doesn’t mean the Aboriginals cannot pursue self-determination. The rights of the Aboriginals should take precedence over other groups in any claim for self-determination, they are the distinct ancestral group that have the longest ties to that land. They have nowhere else to go, Australia is their only homeland. So theoretically speaking, they arguably deserve the right to have custody over some or all of that land to govern themselves as an independent nation state if they wanted to. Since the settler groups first arrived, they have made significant contributions towards developing infrastructure and land within their own society. It would not be fair and reasonable for the groups that built the societies infrastructure to give it away to another group due to a claim for self-determination. The Aboriginals may want the settler groups that lived in Australia to leave the country. This proposal would likely result in disputes and conflict, however one idea on how it could be potentially achieved in a somewhat amicable way is by paying for the infrastructure that has been built by the settler groups. This means the contribution efforts from the settler groups that built the society couldn’t be claimed without some form of reasonable compensation. This would also need to take into account the need to make any reasonable deductions in that cost due to any unpaid reparations that might be warranted - such as due to the historical loss of land, infrastructure and life due to colonisation. The idea that the Aboriginals can purchase all of the infrastructure that has now been built over many generations could be highly impractical due to the enormous costs involved. A serious amount of effort and resources have gone into building that society. It might not be realistically feasible that the Aboriginals have the funds to pay the settler groups enough to reclaim ownership over all of the infrastructure that has been built. The Aboriginals are still entitled to pursue self-determination so that they can start their own nation-state if they want to just govern themselves and their own future. It might not be practical to reclaim the entirety of the land and infrastructure that has been built by the settler groups over the last few hundred years. Alternatively the Aboriginals may want to identify specific areas of land that they want to reclaim and take custody over. This could be purchased or given to them due to warranted reparations. It may also be a gradual process that happens over many years. As well as this there might be an agreement to support the Aboriginals as a one-off or over a period of time due to any warranted reparations for historical loss. Protecting distinct groups by applying self-determination rights is clearly nuanced and very complex in these types of situations. Collectively we want to protect the continuity and livelihoods of distinct ancestral groups in their own homeland. To achieve that it makes sense that these distinct ancestral groups should take precedent over settler groups that might have come and created their own society. Although there is clearly a lot of complexity with handling historical colonisation outcomes, it is also not reasonable to expect settler groups to fully abandon generations of contribution effort that were involved in building their own distinct society. Resolving these issues amicably may likely require compromises on both sides and potentially reparations from settler groups if they are warranted. Complex self-determination situations such as those involving colonisation would likely benefit from solutions that pursue more gradual change and resolutions over time rather than sudden demands being made by one group that wants to pursue their self-determination rights. ## Relevance to nationalism Self-determination can be applied in a multitude of ways such as through local protect communities, federalism, devolution and regional autonomy. However self-determination can be highly important for protecting the continuity of distinct groups and their culture, heritage and way of life in their own nation-states. If one group wants to retain their self-determination it can mean that other people should not be able to receive citizenship and political membership to participate in their politics. Giving other groups voting rights could result in conflicting power dynamics between different groups and this problem could become increasingly problematic for the distinct group that wanted to retain their self-determination. Growing majority powers within other groups that have received voting power could result in a loss of self-determination for the distinct group. This is why self-determination rights need to be applied to the distinct group that wants to be protected by their own political system. The two distinct groups that will often be the most relevant for pursuing self-determination include distinct ancestral groups and group who have built their own distinct societies. When applied to these groupings, self-determination rights can help with more reliably preserving the continuity of these distinct groups over the long term. ## **Resources** International IDEA, *Self-determination,*