Imagine for a moment that States, the United Nations and the international community were to recognize and implement self-determination as a moral political position by giving it primacy over State territorial integrity that allowed a people to freely determine their political status rather than on political expediency. This could lead to dramatic consequences within the context of conflict and peace, where the most direct implication would make using violence as a tool to either deny or assert sovereignty and self-determination unnecessary. Such an imagination directly impacts the future of struggling peoples. Being aware they have the right to freely determine their political status, unrepresented peoples would be able to re-examine their positions by assessing their current situation and exploring the viability of sustaining themselves as an independent entity in political, social, and economic terms in a shared future.
In this probable scenario the struggling peoples have the option to craft a holistic road-map to independence using a non-violent participatory democratic approach, or to remain within the existing State based on terms negotiated by it. Both scenarios allow for creating conditions towards a peaceful co-existence. In either case, the outcome should be the result of a free, well-informed choice that emerges through a democratic process. This imagination brings to public expression that, at its root, implementing genuine self-determination is essential to peacebuilding. For this reason, Nihal Jayawickrama points out the “urgency for international law to recognize and apply this principle in practice if recurring violence is not to be the predominant feature of life.”
History has, however, demonstrated that States, international law and international organizations have upheld State territorial integrity and State sovereignty over and above a peoples’ right to determine their political future. The United Nations’ approach to self-determination was framed to be applied only in the classical and narrowly defined circumstances of ‘salt-water’ and colonialism. This denial has been responsible for much conflict and human suffering. Interestingly, since 1989, the formation of new states created from recognized sovereign territorial entities (e.g., South Sudan from Sudan, East Timor from Indonesia) clearly indicates that the United Nations is compelled to rethink its approach to self-determination by acknowledging the legitimacy of peoples’ right over State sovereignty in the greater interest of peace and security. The right to freely determine a peoples’ political status outside the context of decolonization is an emerging reality in the present world order.
In this evolving new world order, Nagas can make their road by walking together. Nagas collectively can muster the will to engage and transform injustices that destroy human dignity by empowering people to regain their humanity and ownership to be self-determining entities. Peace necessitates the transformation of all unjust systems to ensure that the injustices are not committed again. Peace is not a single vision; peace is the way! Nagas need to be open to developing a natural praxis based on the idea that the freedom of one is absolutely connected to and dependent on the freedom of the other; because when one is unfree, no one can claim to be free. Finally, a reconciled and shared Naga aspiration is the best opportunity for the people to claim their rightful place in their own history. This can begin with the Naga heart enabling a collective and optimistic imagination a space of its own that embraces a common Naga future.
