Origin Of Self-Determination

Origin
Self-determination stems from the American Declaration of Independence of 1789 and was also further stressed in the French Revolution by the French National Assembly on 17th November, 1792. These uprisings sought to establish states which would secure the unalienable rights of citizens and derive its power from those it governed, thereby ensuring that decent respect is given to the opinion of mankind. Franck further explains this principle stressing that “self-determination basically postulates the right of a people to be organized in an established territory, and to determine its collective political destiny in a democratic fashion and is therefore at the core of the democratic entitlement.” The rise of democratic entitlement in the

In his now famous Fourteen Points Address to the US Congress on the 8th of January, 1918, he went on to warn statesmen that they would “henceforth ignore the principle of self-determination at their own peril.” From this point the term started evolving with subtle changes in the meaning and usage of the phrase. In the American Declaration, self-determination meant the legitimacy of a government in the international society of states. However, modern literature refers to self-determination as the process by which secessionist groups, from within the state can gain entry to the international society of states by breaking away from the state structure that does not represent

This was the start of a trend that led to the fracturing of Wilsonian norms and led to the development of self-determination norms as we recognise them today.

The next stage in the development of self-determination came following World War II with the support of the Soviet Union, despite the principle getting only a limited mention in Articles 1 and 55 of the United Nations Charter.

Soviet support: the changing of the Norm
Lenin was supportive of the principle of self-determination and criticized the imperialistic ways of countries like Britain, France, Spain and Portugal, with special reference to their overseas colonies. This stance presented an interesting contradiction in the form of the Baltic Republics, who had the right to secede from the Soviet Republic written into their Constitution, and then had this very right suppressed by the Soviets. In this new concept of self-determination, ‘people’ were no longer defined ethnically or racially,; it merely applied to the freeing of colonised people from their masters. This new ideology still comprised of the Wilsonian model’s fundamental principles, namely the consent of the governed and the idea of the people being able