Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gupie | Hacker News Reader

The freedom of self determination, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination:

"The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a jus cogens rule), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms.[1][2] It states that people, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference."

View on HN

Self-determination can't be apply to a region of Spain.

'In international law, the right of self-determination that became recognized in the 1960s was interpreted as the right of all colonial territories to become independent or to adopt any other status they freely chose. Ethnic or other distinct groups within colonies did not have a right to separate themselves from the "people" of the territory as a whole.'

https://pesd.princeton.edu/?q=node/254

The wikipedia article says "There are conflicting definitions and legal criteria for determining which groups may legitimately claim the right to self-determination." Have you not just pick a definition that agrees with you political point of view?

"Other definitions offered are "peoples" being self-evident (from ethnicity, language, history, etc.), or defined by "ties of mutual affection or sentiment", i.e. "loyalty", or by mutual obligations among peoples.[40] Or the definition may be simply that a people is a group of individuals who unanimously choose a separate state"

He picked the definition that is acknowledged by international law. You're the one that picked a random definition that suits you.

Rights are inherently individual. You have rights, I have rights, etc. "People" don't have rights, no "Lebensraum", nothing. You, and only you, are in a relationship with the state, not subsumed in an aggregation of any kind.

"The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law"

I am not an international lawyer myself but seeming "the right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law". If this is incorrect a people do have rights. In fact this is a cardinal principle in modern international law.

my understanding is that international laws are set so that humans do have rights due to their conditions of being human, based on the assumption that there are things that you cannot do, regardless of the culture you live in. It aims at invalidating the idea that I can only articulate as "that is how things work in this country". For instance, you cannot annihilate groups of people based on religion, that is a crime, internationally, even if your country allows it.

That said, and again, these are individual rights. You can't condemn Rwanda for the crimes committed by their leaders: these leaders are put on trial.

It occurs to me that the US has sanctioned Iran and other countries (not an expert) in the past/present (again, not an expert). But that isn't international law: those are unilateral decisions made by the US government.

I can see both things occurring, but not intertwined. Could you please expand on what you understand by "people do have rights"?

> That said, and again, these are individual rights. You can't condemn Rwanda for the crimes committed by their leaders: these leaders are put on trial.

Personal international law is basically a post-WWII invention,and having regularized international methods of enforcing such law started with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court quite recently.

International law operating at the level of nations has existed longer, and while ad hoc national acts are still the dominant method of compelling compliance, has had a permanent international venue for resolving cases much longer than international law addressing individual responsibility. So, yes, as well as (and longer than) we’ve been able to hold individuals accountable for violations of international law, we can also hold whole nations responsible.

Thanks for clarifying on this!

> Rights are inherently individual

Depends. If you talk about rights as given by some law, then the law subjects are the ones who bear rights. In some cases the law subjects are individuals, in other cases (international law) these are explicitly not individuals.

If that is the case, then how are groups of people held accountable? If there is a chance for groups to "have rights", then there must be a certain set of obligations that they must fulfill in order to do that.

Nations do not have "rights to vote", for instance: it all comes down to the individuals that make up those nations.

It's really hard for me to understand how groups of people would have rights, if someone could elaborate on that, that would be much appreciated.

Not sure how you mean "held accountable" when talking about rights?

Nations do have the right to vote, just look at the UN General Assembly (well, not counting Taiwan or the Sahrawis).

Regarding rights of individuals: If country A commits a violation of international law, and an individual B who is national of country C is affected by that, then B cannot sue A directly. Instead, C must bring the case against A before an appropriate court like the ICJ. This happened e.g. in the LaGrand case[1] between Germany and the US.

On the other hand, if A finds that C owes it money, and C doesn't pay, then any assets of B that happen to be under the jurisdiction of A can be confiscated to pay for the debt. This happened e.g. in the Icesave dispute[2] between Iceland and the UK.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaGrand_case

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute

They can do so through legal means. It is just hard as we need to agree all together to change the Constitution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com