Emancipatory Diplomacy: Reclaiming Self-Determination in Contemporary National Liberation Struggles

Self-determination has been inscribed into political instruments such as the UN Charter, which deems respect for the self-determination of peoples one key to building “universal peace” (Chapter 1, Art.1, para. 2), which then derived into more concrete commitments such as UNGA Resolution 1514 (XV) of 1960, that adopted the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples. Next, other international legal instruments such as the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) of 1966, and the 1977 Protocol (I) Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, among others, like advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), coincide in recognizing, for instance, that “the peoples of the world ardently desire the end of colonialism in all its manifestations”, whereas “the continued existence of colonialism prevents the development of international economic cooperation, impedes the social, cultural and economic development of dependent peoples and militates against the United Nations ideal of universal peace” (A/RES/1514 (XV), Preamble). Hence, in the era of anti-colonial struggles, a staunch commitment to self-determination was etched into international law as the realization of independence for the creation of nation-states, the social form that capitalism tends to universalize, thus avoiding structural changes to the capitalist international system. Still, cases remain pending as new international dynamics suspend this right in the face of new conjunctural constraints, especially in what this paper calls oppressive diplomatic processes. Stark and contemporary examples of this, and often termed “protracted conflicts”, Palestine’s and Western Sahara’s persist as unresolved claims for national self-determination as their peoples’ liberation from colonial occupation by Israel and Morocco. Nonetheless, various types of Palestinian and Saharawi actors continue engaged in promoting their claim in different platforms, with state officials, diplomats, “civil society” actors and the National Liberation Movement itself reaching out for international solidarity through various means, in order to change their disadvantageous position in the correlation of forces with the occupiers. Based on empirical research into these movements, this paper discusses the limitations found in a strategy of national liberation as the realization of self-determination in the form of human rights and peoples’ “right” to form nation-states. It looks at the heterogeneous collective of Palestinian and Saharawi actors mobilized as part of the NLM and endeavoring to represent themselves by prefiguring self-determination - e.g., as states and as “civil society”, under the restrictive terms enforced by the institutions of a capitalist international system. It ponders what these structures and instruments still have to offer them after decades of not only stagnation but actual deterioration of their conditions, and explores the implications that these frameworks’ intrinsic limitations have for emancipatory strategy.