Ilan Halevi
in Hommage à Léo Matarasso, Séminaire sur le droit des peuples, Cahier réalisé par CEDETIM-LIDLP-CEDIDELP, Février 1999
Considering the topicality of the themes of the Algiers Declaration mentioned by Louis Joinet, it is clear that the concept of self-determination has been challenged in the last decade for contradictory reasons.
First of all, the antiquity of this concept comes up against a changed reality: Louis spoke of the fact that since the drafting of this Declaration many peoples have gained political independence. This movement of accession to the “Nation-State” form of social organization has triumphed everywhere, until it has become the dominant form of contemporary society. But this has not been achieved in an egalitarian way, since this accession has been based on different power relations according to the regions. There are, for example, special cases such as the Palestinian and Kurdish peoples. They are peoples in the Wilsonian sense, but they have still not achieved national political self-determination in the classical sense.
On the other hand, in regions where the nation-state form already exists, it is currently being challenged, both because it has been overtaken by new realities and because it is facing its own contradictions.
The deepening of local democracy is leading to increasingly institutionalised forms of decentralisation within states, and to the appearance of forms of regional grouping and concentration, often economically based, but which are causing transfers of sovereignty to supranational institutions (cf. the case of the European Union), and are helping to challenge the national form of states.
Moreover, in the context of so-called globalization (although for all those who have been in the school of Marxist thought, this concept is not new in the sense that it was already posed in the problematic of internationalism), the aggravation of processes based on economic and financial dynamics, and above all their massive internalization in the collective perception of contemporary reality, paradoxically reinforces the idea that the nation-state is the only possible and rational form of organization of society. However, it is subject to very strong criticism.
Finally, the model of the Nation-State, which we know historically owes much to the French model in its radical and homogeneous perception, has been applied to regions where the State was incipient and where social formations were interrupted by processes of conquest. In this case, the State does not cover an old administrative and political formation, but groups together a territory in which various communities live. This attempt to apply the unitary nation-state model has led to an ethnic or confessional confiscation of power and to the oppression of minorities, which, as Louis Joinet said, are often in the majority.
There is also a questioning of the principle of the “Right of Nations to Self-Determination” because of the contradictions generated by its operation in the very reality of societies. The concept of the “Right of Peoples”, especially as defined in the Algiers Declaration and by the theoretical and political practice of the League, is a possible response, because it plays on the ambiguity of the concept of “people”.
In all languages, the concept of people always has a double meaning: an identity, ethnic or national meaning, which refers to the community as a whole, and a social meaning, designating the popular masses of this society. There is therefore the people in relation to their leaders and the people in relation to their neighbours. It is by starting from this ambiguity of the concept of people and the right of peoples in relation to the rights of States or Nations, that we can link what in the Declaration is referred to as external self-determination and internal self-determination. This responds to one of the concerns of political practice, which is the impossibility of adhering strictly to either an individual or a collective approach. For example, the situation in East Jerusalem is not a question of individual rights, because although the individual rights of Palestinians are violated there, it cannot be said that if all the rights of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem were respected within the framework of Israeli sovereignty the issue would be resolved. But neither can we establish the principle of the right to self-determination and sovereignty over East Jerusalem without the possibility of respecting and defending the individual rights of the inhabitants, regardless of their nationality, religious affiliation, etc.
The need to resolve this contradiction between the law of peoples and the law of nations is today, and this is what we need most. We must be able to differentiate between these extremely archaic situations and more advanced ones, but we must also be able to provide instruments of analysis and action that allow us to be faithful to fundamental values.
A final comment on Louis Joinet’s speech. It is true that the current challenge, beyond these imperfect forms of state organisation, is also to organise pluralism, not only political, but also ethnic or religious.
It is very difficult, because if it has to be organised, it cannot be said that it does not exist. For example, the Lebanese model failed because it had become totally anachronistic. It was originally a model based on the need for quotas. Similarly, in the Palestinian legislative elections, some seats were reserved for Christians. But I think that it is not enough to say that we must organise this pluralism, because the organisation and institutionalisation of this communitarianism are fraught with danger. Indeed, when we organize communal power within a State, we not only give free expression to these claims, but we also create new forms of representativeness which are new forms of power and which become stakes, with communal mechanisms for reproducing their power and for preserving their communal power.
This is a problem that is seen in multicommunity civil societies, whatever the form of the States.
Halevi, Ilan