UN Charter definition
“By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations,
all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter.”
(The United Nation General Assembly Resolution 2625 (XXV): Declaration of Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, 24 October 1970)
In the opening chapter of the UN Charter, respect for the right to self-determination of peoples is presented as one of the purposes of the United Nations. The right to self-determination of peoples was confirmed by the United Nations General Assembly (GA) in the Declaration of Friendly Relations, which was unanimously adopted in 1970 and is considered an authoritative indication of customary international law. Article 1, common to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), reaffirms the right of all peoples to self-determination, and lays upon state parties the obligation to promote and to respect it.
The right to self-determination was first recognised in the context of decolonisation; however, numerous human rights instruments, including conventional law, such as common Article 1 of ICCPR and ICESCR, as well as several GA Resolutions coupled with state practice, have extended its application beyond the colonial context, for example to South Africans under the apartheid regime. Some scholars also affirmed its application to analogous cases,
such as peoples under belligerent occupation.
Criteria for the right to self-determination
A people can be said to have realised its right to self-determination when they have either (1) established a sovereign and independent state; (2) freely associated with another state or (3) integrated with another state after freely having expressed their will to do so . The definition of realisation of self-determination was confirmed in the Declaration of Friendly Relations .
The right to self-determination - IHL