Tran Van Minh

in Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos n. 3 (February 1984)

The first modern proclamation of the rights of peoples was undoubtedly the American Declaration of Independence of 1776. It begins by asserting the right of each people to “dissolve the political ties which bind them to one another, and to take, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal place to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them”. However, it was the French Revolution of 1789 that first conceptualised them. For the French revolutionaries, the entire system of human and peoples’ rights is based on the principle of the sovereignty of the people, and only a government based on this principle allows the development of all.
Robespierre spoke of the “sacred principle of the sovereignty of peoples” (1) and Carnot, in his report of 14 February 1793 to the Convention, enumerated the rights of peoples as follows: “…the right of each people to give itself the government it likes,… the invariable right of each nation to live in isolation if it likes, or to unite with others if it so wishes… Every people, however small the country it inhabits, is absolutely master of its own home… it is equal to the greatest, and no one can legitimately attack its independence… Sovereignty belongs to all peoples; there can be no community or union between them except by virtue of a formal and free transaction; none of them has the right to subject the other to common laws without his express consent…”.
Understood in this way, the rights of peoples are essentially expressed in their right to self-determination.
Internally – in the relationship between the people and the state – self-determination refers to the right to freely determine the form of government, and even to change the regime in case of oppression. The right of the people to insurrection is recognised by the Declaration of Philadelphia of 1776 as well as by the French Constitution of 1793, which even considers it as “the most sacred of rights or the most indispensable of duties”. The right of the people to self-determination appears to be both the precondition and the guarantor of human rights. As a safeguard of individual freedoms, it may even allow, in some cases, as in North and Latin America, secession. The First French Republic, on the other hand, in an admittedly different context, formally excludes such a possibility (2).
Externally – in the relations of peoples with each other – self-determination has the effect of prohibiting the undermining of a people’s independence as well as its freedom to determine its political system and to choose its alliances.
Logically, it should imply the right of the peoples of the colonies to independence. However, the French Revolution merely abolished slavery in the colonies and granted all their inhabitants, without distinction of colour, the status of French citizens and “all the rights assured by the Revolution”.
An indirect justification of this attitude can be found in a report by Abbé Grégoire to the Convention on 27 November 1792: “Several regions of Europe and America will soon enlarge the domain of liberty; but a few hundred peoples will still be strangers to true principles for a long time to come, and it is doubtful whether they will soon be adopted by the barbaric skimmers, the thieves of Arabia, and the anthropophagi of the South Sea.
Only those peoples who were committed to the “true principles” (sovereignty of the people and human rights) were therefore ripe for independence. This idea seems to be not unrelated to the subsequent discrimination between ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ peoples, which served to justify colonial conquests and maintain Western domination in the name of the ‘sacred mission of civilisation’.
As soon as it was born, the ideology of the rights of peoples was blocked in one of its essential elements, the self-determination of dominated peoples. And this right to independence would take a century and a half to gain a place in the international legal order. Initially mentioned in an elliptical manner in the United Nations Charter, it was expressly enshrined in the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, adopted in 1960 by the UN General Assembly, at a time when decolonisation was nearing completion for many countries.
The recognition of the principle of sovereignty of peoples was completed with the two International Covenants on Human Rights of 1966, which entered into force in 1976. Their first article proclaims the right of peoples to self-determination, including the right to freely determine their political status, to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and to permanent sovereignty over their natural resources and wealth.
More than the enumeration of peoples’ rights, it is their scope that appears interesting. Indeed, by attributing identical rights to peoples and States, international instruments have recognised the duality of beneficiaries and enabled the effective implementation of peoples’ rights.
Thus, a dominated people, from whom foreign powers or even transnational corporations have taken wealth or territory, could, by virtue of its own rights, demand its restitution after its accession to independence. These peoples’ rights will provide the legal basis for the action of their future state.
Similarly, it is possible to take precautionary measures to prevent a dominant power from monopolising the wealth and resources of a dominated people, pending a decision on the issue of territorial sovereignty. This is the case in Namibia, for example, or in the occupied Arab territories.
Could already constituted peoples, when a government has allowed foreign countries or firms to plunder national resources and wealth, take action after the regime has been overthrown? This is the important problem of a revolutionary regime challenging international commitments made by a previous government. The French Revolution had provided a precedent by challenging the Treaties of Westphalia with respect to the possessed princes of Alsace and the Dutch monopoly of navigation on the Scheldt, saying, in the latter case, that this privilege “is revocable at all times and in spite of all conventions, because nature recognises no more privileged people than privileged individuals, and that the rights of man are forever imprescriptible.
In recent years, a new ideal has emerged: that of the solidarity of peoples. Implicit in Articles 55 and 56 of the United Nations Charter, it is expressed in its many internal and international aspects by the Declaration on Social Progress and Development, adopted by the UN General Assembly in November 1969. International peace and solidarity (preamble) are associated with the need to accelerate the social and economic development of the countries of the Third World “through a modification of international economic relations and through new and effective methods of international co-operation such that equality of opportunity” is achieved for all peoples (art. 12).
But it is above all in two documents, one doctrinal, the other conventional and inter-state, that the new principle is forcefully proclaimed. Firstly, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples, drawn up in Algiers in 1976 by progressive intellectuals and politicians, affirms that the economic rights of peoples ‘must be exercised in a spirit of solidarity among the peoples of the world and with due regard for their respective interests’ (art. 12), and that, in exercising the new rights, ‘every people must take into account the need to co-ordinate the requirements of its economic development with those of solidarity among all countries of the world’ (art. 18). Secondly, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, adopted in Nairobi on 28 June 1981 during the eighteenth summit of the Organisation of African Unity, precisely defines the new rights of peoples and twice refers to the “principle of solidarity” (art. 23).
Among the main solidarity rights listed in these texts, we can mention the right to development, the right to enjoy the common heritage of mankind (the high seas, the sea bed, outer space), the right to the environment, etc. It should be noted that the right to development as a right of solidarity is not the same as the right to development as a right of sovereignty. Indeed, the latter is only one aspect of the right to self-determination, meaning the right of each people to freely choose the objectives, means, model and path of development, without external interference of any kind, while the former means the right to achieve a satisfactory level of economic development through international cooperation and solidarity.
It seems that the very notion of solidarity between peoples can be understood in two ways, which are not mutually exclusive, but which would represent two successive levels of claims.
If it is to be understood in the sense of the interdependence of nations, it does not bring about any real novelty. The coexistence of peoples necessarily implies the reconciliation of the rights of both.
For innovation to take place, solidarity would have to become the foundation of a new international order.
The existing international order was established at a time when most of the current Third World states were still colonial or semi-colonial countries. As a mercantilist and imperialist order, it reflected relationships of domination and exploitation. As a Eurocentric order, it ignored the rights of men and peoples in other parts of the world.
Decolonisation and the accession to international life of a hundred or so new countries requires the establishment of new relationships, based on interdependence and co-operation, but also on the correction of inequalities and the rectification of existing injustices. This would be the spirit of the new international order defined by the United Nations in two fundamental instruments: the Declaration on the New International Economic Order and the 1974 Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States.
The search for a new order is in itself nothing new. Whenever the world emerges from major political and territorial upheavals, international relations are redefined.
What is original in the current situation is the quest for a fundamental change in international relations and their spirit, to enable the people of the Third World to reduce and then make up for the backwardness caused by decades, if not centuries of domination and exploitation. Participation in inter-state decisions on development, participation in the common wealth and fruits of progress, transfer of technology and resources, different measures of “catching up”, etc., are among the main implications of the new order. The 1976 Algiers Declaration even added to this list the non-liability of “external financial burdens which have become excessive and unbearable for the peoples” (art. 26).
Solidarity rights thus appear as ‘class rights’, opposable essentially to the affluent nations. They serve to legitimise and provide a legal basis for Third World claims against the latter. At the same time, however, they do not overlap with similar state rights; they point the way for developing country governments, which cannot deviate from them without risking the disavowal of their respective peoples.
It is obvious that such a revolutionary conception of the solidarity of peoples could only be imposed gradually. Long confined to the ethical order as an expression of the idea of “international social justice”, it is now part of the ideology of the United Nations as well as the political credo of progressive nations, and is beginning to penetrate the positive legal order in the form of specific norms obtained through negotiations. Recent measures adopted in this spirit include the 1980 Geneva Agreement creating a Common Fund for Commodities, long called for by the Third World, as well as certain provisions of the new 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (right to the resources of the Area, assistance to developing States, transfer of marine technology, etc.), which is currently being ratified.
However, it would be wrong to believe that the struggle for solidarity rights is independent of the struggle for sovereignty rights. The two are inseparable, attacking the different political-legal as well as economic-social aspects of the existing international order.
Without prior self-determination, no economic and social progress is possible. But without a reduction in inequalities and injustices between peoples, the sovereignty of the poor and the weak is of little consequence.

Notes:

1 Letter to his principals of 5 February 1792. Complete works, vol. V, 1961, pp. 271-272.
2 Decree of 13 April 1793. Bûchez and Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, T. 21, 1835, p. 354.

Tran, Van Minh
in: Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos n. 3 (February 1984)