Suchergebnisse

Any examination of self-determination runs promptly into the difficulty
that while the concept lends itself to simple formulation in words which
have a ring of universal applicability and perhaps of revolutionary slogans,
when the time comes to put it into operation it turns out to be a complex
matter hedged in by limitations and caveats. In a different turn of phrase,
what is stated in big print—as in the reiterated United Nations injunction:
All peoples have the right to self-determination—is drastically modified by
what follows in small print. Indeed, once the major original exercise of
self-determination has been undertaken, the small print takes over and
becomes the big print which establishes the new and far more restrictive
guidelines.

In a period in which the concept of self‐determination has become a cliche, it seems astonishing that it occupies the center of the historical stage in the various searches for a community in the horn of Africa. Thus, the concept itself might indeed have been a cliche, but not for the millions of human beings that have sacrificed, and continue to sacrifice, their lives for the sake of a way of life that the concept promises.