THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION AND SECESSION IN AFRICA: THE CASE OF SOUTH SUDAN AND LESSONS FOR THE REGION

Abstract

The right to self-determination will continue to be a complex matter for the international community and African policymakers are not exempted from it. The complexity of the matter does not stem from the existence or not of this right, which can be found in various international and regional legal instruments, but from the failure of these instruments to present more nuanced views on who exactly is qualified to claim this right. Is it a group of people with unique characteristics or a nation based on other factors? And equally important, what does this right present? 

The international community since the post -World War II has vehemently stood for the indivisibility of territorial borders irrespectively of how and when these borders were formed. This stance has prompted many groups and individuals that exist as minorities within a state to invoke the principle of the right to self-determination in recent years to fight for greater participation in government and in some cases, outright autonomy, particularly in Europe, as witnessed recently in the Catalonian case. Some territories have resorted to arms struggle to achieve this goal 

The reasons are usually the same when groups press for the exercise of the right to selfdetermination, the demands are always for an improved government system or an end to human rights abuses from the central government. The inability of the international community and authors of international law to give definite interpretation to what the right to self-determination involves has led to more confusion and chaos within some existing state. 

The right to exercise the principle of self-determination has led to conflicts in some instances and academics have struggled to find the origin to this initiative, more disturbing is that the international community has not paid enough attention to agitators and secessionists leading to skirmishes that would have been avoided. This impression makes groups believe that the only way to press home their demands is to carry up arms and defend what they usually claim is rightfully theirs. A case in question is the on-going crisis in the Cameroons that has left hundreds of “Anglophone” speaking Cameroonians dead. When violence ensues, dispute settlement becomes more difficult and threatening to arrive at. 

In light of the above, this paper will examine the place of self-determination side-by-side with secession and how South Sudan emerged from the exercise after a referendum in January 2011. It will also investigate how the South Sudan experience has encouraged other secessionist movements in the region and the lessons that are there to be learned, going forward.