From webink at peg.pegasus.oz.au Tue Aug 6 13:05:58 1991 From: webink at peg.pegasus.oz.au (webink at peg.pegasus.oz.au) Date: 06 Aug 1991 22:05:58 +1000 Subject: Kurds & self-determination: UN mus Message-ID: The Kurds, the United Nations and self-determination: An urgent call to explore solutions In the following article it is contended that though the UN has handled the process of decolonisation quite well, it has failed to address a second generation of claims to self-determination, such as those of the Kurds, the Tibetans, the Tamils of Sri Lanka and the Bougainvilleans of Papua New Guinea. Consequently these frustrated claims fester, generating vicious circles of resistance and repression, while the UN either ignores them or applies band-aid solutions to their symptoms. The UN could and should give problems of frustrated self-determination the same status it has hitherto given problems of decolonisation. These ideas are elaborated in the following paper. This has been posted to earthnet by Malcolm Lewis on behalf of the Secure Australia Project. ( P.O. Box Bulimba, QLD, 4171 Australia) *************************************** The Kurds and self-determination: the UN must act now for a new process Herb Feith and Alan Smith Department of Politics, Monash University Melbourne, Australia The crisis of the Kurds in the wake of the Gulf war has highlighted a new challenge for the international community: to empower the UN to deal authoritatively with second generation self-determination claims -- not only the Kurds but the Lithuanians, the Croats and Slovenians of Yugoslavia, the Quebecois of Canada, the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Eritreans, the Kashmiris, the Tibetans and so on -- which have grown dramatically in the past 5-10 years. (Of course there remain intractable first generation problems such as the decolonisation of East Timor.) The safe havens established for the Kurds in Northern Iraq may be a step in the right direction. But they are no more than an emergency measure, and they deal with only a very small part of the problem. What the Kurdish refugee crisis demonstrated was the Kurds' need for a breakthrough on political formulas -- a far-reaching change in their constitutional relationship with Iraq. That does not necessarily mean a separate state, though an independent Kurdistan in which Kurds from Iraq, Turkey and Iran are united has been a recurring dream. But the post Gulf War crisis showed that the essence of the issue was not Kurdistan, which would involve a major redrawing of boundaries, but the demand of Iraq's Kurds for freedom from oppression. What their leaders are seeking is genuine autonomy within Iraq, guaranteed by UN presences and enshrined in international law. Refugees as a catalyst of change The massive exodus of Kurds from Iraq highlighted a problem to which the UN High Commission for Refugees has persistently called attention. Refugee authorities have stressed for years that it is unrealistic for most of the world's 17 million or so refugees to hope for permanent resettlement either in the countries to which they have fled or in faraway places like Australia, Canada, the US or Western Europe. Their best hope, these authorities contend, lies in voluntary repatriation to the countries they left, which requires the unmaking of the processes of ethnic, political and other repression which caused them to flee. Refugee specialists have taken a similar view. Emergency relief is essential, they argue. But the UN must begin to tackle refugee problems with a concern for "durable solutions" based on a willingness to tackle "root causes". Frustrated claims to self-determination What is needed is a breakthrough in the capacity of the UN system to deal with frustrated claims to self-determination. It is thwarted claims of this kind which lead people to join what they see as patriotic movements of resistance to oppression, to cross borders en masse when their resistance is suppressed, and then to languish in refugee camps for years and decades while the rest of the world forgets them. Why have the world's major powers been reluctant to go beyond the provision of relief in emergencies? Basically, it seems, for reasons of "oldthink", because few of them see ways of conceding self- determination without breaking up established states. They are committed to the present system of borders world-wide because they are worried that a change in one multi-ethnic state would set off falling dominoes in many others (including some of the major powers themselves). President Bush and the other main leaders of the concert of powers were understandably frightened of Iraq's disintegration. They feared that Iran would be greatly strengthened as a regional power, and persistent that violence between ethnic and ethno-religious blocs would merge, as in Lebanon. In this respect the case of Iraq was instructive. All the major Iraqi opposition groups -- the Kurdish, Shiite, Sunni and Communist parties -- were committed to the formation of a federal Iraq. Self-determination : a second generation of claims The self-determination of peoples is a central principle of the United Nations Charter. And the UN system worked creatively and effectively to realise that principle in the first decades of its life -- in relation to peoples struggling against colonial rule. Between the late 1940s and the early 1970s it successfully mediated the decolonisation of a large and diverse group of Asian, African, Caribbean and Pacific colonies. With the achievement of independence in Namibia in 1990 and the Security Council decision of April 1991 to hold a UN-supervised plebiscite in the Western Sahara, only a small handful of territories, including East Timor and New Caledonia (Kanaky) remain on the Decolonisation Committee agenda. But the UN has failed so far in relation to the more recent class of claims to self-determination which are not directed at European colonial powers. It was war rather than UN conflict resolution which settled the secessionist bid by Biafrans against Nigeria in 1967-70. And war was a major part of the process by which the Bengali nationalists of the province of East Pakistan created the state of Bangladesh in 1971. The second generation of claims to self-determination, of which Biafra and Bangladesh were early representatives, has grown substantially in the last 5-10 years, and now constitutes a major world order problem. Witness the increasingly clamorous demands of the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, of the Georgians and other Soviet peoples, of the Croats and Slovenes in Yugoslavia, the Quebecois in Canada, the Eritreans, Tibetans, Kashmiris, West Papuans and East Timorese, and the Bougainvilleans of Papua New Guinea. And, most immediately, of the Kurds. * * * * * * Box: How the UN could handle self-determination How would a new UN process for settling claims to self-determination work? How would it deal with a community seeking to redefine its relationship with a state? Here is a potential process in outline. Representatives of the group claiming the right to self-determination would be able to argue that they have a prima facie case before a UN 'Committee for the Registration of Claims to Self-Determination' (established by the General Assembly). Meanwhile a 'Working Group' or 'Expert Body' appointed by the UN Secretary General would examine forms through which the aspirations of peoples to self-determination could be met. This Group's considerations would have included a range of options other than separate statehood, including "free association", a form authorised in the UN General Assembly's decolonisation resolution of 1960 but hitherto still largely unexplored. (The form of free association achieved by the Cook Islands in relation to New Zealand is often seen as honouring the spirit of self-determination.) During the processing of a claim there would have been a great deal of discussion and argument, both among the claimants and within the government of the state concerned, as to the terms of a settlement which might satisfy both parties. At that point the Security Council would establish an ad hoc body to mediate an appropriate outcome, drawing on the range of forms explored by the 'Expert Group'. The composition of this mediating group might resemble that of the UN Commission for Indonesia which mediated the Dutch-Indonesian conflict in 1948-49. That was a three-member body consisting of Belgium (chosen by Holland), Australia (chosen by Indonesia) and the US (chosen by Belgium and Australia together). * * * * * UN machinery and principles Happily the UN system has developed a lot of relevant capacities since the days of Biafra and Bangladesh, particularly the Human Rights Commission and its Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. And the three years before the Gulf War saw a major expansion of its conflict-resolving and peace- keeping activities. One UN body that has been coming to grips with the new generation of self-determination claims is the Sub-Commission's Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Many of the indigenous communities whose representations it has considered have demanded recognition of their right to self-determination, including sovereignty and standing in international law, while not seeking the establishment of separate states. Moreover, some of the principles established by the General Assembly during the period of decolonisation remain highly relevant to the present generation of self-determination claims. One particularly useful formulation is the 1960 resolution which sets out three ways by which non-self-governing territories could become self-governing : independence, integration with an existing state, and the apparently flexible but as yet largely unexplored range of options termed "free association". A new approach to fit the new generation of self-determination claims may produce some entirely new outcomes, not only the ones of independent statehood, membership of a federal or confederal state, 'special regions' and 'special autonomous territories' but also others for which there are currently no precedents. These could well involve new types of quasi-states, new types of international guarantees and new types of UN presence. What is needed now Far-sighted people in states and non-government organisations everywhere should therefore be pressing for a major UN initiative toward political reconstruction. Such an initiative would not only help prevent further massive refugee flows and help the other peoples which have been struggling against what they see as oppression by outsiders. It would also help the governments of a number of multi- ethnic states, offering them a way to get off the treadmill of repression, resistance and more repression, enabling them to stop wasting resources in fruitless efforts to maintain an untenable status quo. * * * * * * The authors: This article is by Herb Feith and Alan Smith of the Politics Department of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Herb Feith is an Associate in this Department, having been a Reader in it till 1990. Alan Smith is completing a doctoral dissertation on self- determination. Alan Smith Kyogle Road, Cawongla 2474, Australia. Phone 61-66-337187 Herb Feith 40 Kyarra Road, Glen Iris 3146, Australia. Contact via Secure Australia Project. P.O. Box 216, Bulimba, QLD 4171 Aistralia. From tiesvan at web.apc.org Wed Aug 7 02:36:06 1991 From: tiesvan at web.apc.org (tiesvan at web.apc.org) Date: 06 Aug 1991 20:36:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: Ecowar Message-ID: THE GULF ENVIRONMENTAL EMERGENCY REPONSE TEAM P.O. Box 1464, Delta Station A Delta, BC V4L 3Y8 Phone/FAX: (604) 731-7788 web/tiesvan "NEVER AGAIN" RANDY THOMAS-environmental journalist, presents his Kuwait film footage. "ECO WAR" PRESENTED IN VANCOUVER Join Randy Thomas, Carl Chaplin and Donald Graham Entertainment : Hardy MacIntosh Tuesday, August 27th, 1991, 8:00 p.m. (Admission: $8.00) Christ Church Catherdal, 650 Burrard, Vancouver, B.C. Sponsored By: GEERT-Gulf Environmental Emergency Response Team W.C.W.C.-Western Canada Wilderness Committee W.H.E.N.-Worldwide Home Environmental Emergency Response Team (604) 731-7788 PRESENTED IN VICTORIA Join Randy Thomas, Carl Chaplin, Donald Graham, and Muriel Sybily in this open forum with entertainment by: The Raging Grannies" Thursday, August 29th, 1991, 8:00 p.m. (Admission: $8.00) Newcombe Theater, 675 Bellville St., Victoria Sponsored by: GEERT-Gulf Environmental Emergency Response Team The Greater Victoria Peace Education Resorce Center Conscience Canada and The Greater Victoria Disarmement Group (604) 384-2445 From worldpnews at igc.apc.org Sun Aug 11 00:29:33 1991 From: worldpnews at igc.apc.org (worldpnews at igc.apc.org) Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1991 16:29:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Pointer:Turkey to genocide Kurds? Message-ID: For reports under this heading, check today's worldp.samples conference From peace at web.apc.org Tue Aug 13 15:53:33 1991 From: peace at web.apc.org (peace at web.apc.org) Date: 13 Aug 1991 09:53:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: Protests of Convenience? Message-ID: Where are all the loud protests over Turkey's attack on the Kurds? Can we only protest when enemies of the US, such as Iraq, appear to be the villains? Why aren't we debating the usefulness of US troops establishing a security zone inside Turkey in the same way as we debated the entry of US troops into Northern Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf "war"?