Most researchers agree that the intellectual and legal origins of the right to self-determination can be traced back to the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Revolution (1789). The concept primarily concerned popular sovereignty and the government’s responsibility towards its citizens. The term was then adopted in the 19th century by revolutionaries such as Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872). However, it was not until the First World War and the period that followed, in the context of the associated geopolitical and ideological upheavals, that the terms ‘principle of self-determination’ and ‘right to self-determination’ came into general use. Both Lenin (1870–1924) and the American President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) used the term ‘right to self-determination’, albeit in different ways. In many respects, the Paris Peace Conference (1919) officially legitimised the principle of self-determination. The redrawing of the map of Europe following the First World War was, in theory, shaped in accordance with the right to self-determination – the so-called ‘Wilsonian system’. Since the First World War, the right to self-determination has often been formulated in ethnic terms and, initially, equated with the quest for statehood, particularly amongst the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe.

In practice, even from an ethnic-national perspective, the Paris Peace Treaties only partially utilised the principle of self-determination as a basis for legitimacy. Although the three multinational empires (the Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian Empires) had collapsed, the new map of Europe saw the formation of multi-ethnic federations (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) as well as de facto multinational states, which their elites, however, regarded as nation states (Romania, Poland). Furthermore, almost everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe, the presence of numerous ethnic and national minorities, who harboured their own hopes for self-determination, led to internal as well as inter-state tensions, which were not without significance for the outbreak of the Second World War.

With the end of the Second World War and the rise of the Soviet Union to world power, the geographical focus of the exercise of the right to self-determination shifted from Central and Eastern Europe to the European colonial empires in Africa and Asia. Consequently, during the Cold War, self-determination became, above all, the legal mantra of decolonisation processes and anti-colonial movements.

After 1989, the collapse of communism triggered the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Once again, the principle of self-determination and discourses on self-determination played an important role in the context of secessions and declarations of independence in the region. The most recent declarations of independence recognised by a majority of international actors in the name of the principle of self-determination are those of Kosovo (2008) and South Sudan (2011).

The principle of self-determination and the associated right to self-determination have been linked to a number of political contexts: They have served as an instrument of emancipation for peoples within Europe’s multinational states, a means of resolving inter-state conflicts, a prerequisite for the anti-colonial movement, the democratic right of a people to elect their own government, and a means of safeguarding minority rights. Furthermore, a number of entities can be regarded as holders of the right to self-determination: individuals, ethnic groups, minorities and states. Both the international system guaranteed by the League of Nations, established in 1920, and that of its successor, the United Nations, have declared the right to self-determination to be one of their fundamental principles, although there is no unanimous agreement regarding its implementation or even its definition.

English: right to self-determination; French: droit à l'autodétermination; Italian: diritto all'autodeterminazione; Romanian: drept la autodeterminare; Hungarian: önrendelkezési jog; Russian: право на самоопределение (pravo na samoopredelenie); Polish: prawo do samostanowienia

According to the United Nations human rights covenants, ‘all peoples’ possess the ‘right to self-determination’, but the limits on the implementation of this right and the boundaries of the ‘self’ are unclear. In its simplest interpretation, the right to self-determination refers to the right of a people to determine their own political destiny.

On the one hand, the controversial aspects of the right to self-determination concern the ethical validity of the concept. On the other hand, they concern the identity of the self and the potential methods of implementing the right. Consequently, two of the most significant questions associated with the right to self-determination are those concerning the definition of the people entitled to exercise this right, and the territorial unit within which the right may be exercised. In this context, the distinction between internal and external self-determination is crucial. The former encompasses various arrangements relating to democracy, autonomy and decentralisation, whilst the latter is understood as the right to secession, independence and statehood.

The emergence of the right to self-determination in European and international geopolitics is closely linked to the figure of the American President Woodrow Wilson and to the end of the First World War. It appears, however, that Wilson’s conception of self-determination was not originally ethnically or nationally oriented, but rather civic in nature. The decolonisation that took place during the Cold War elevated the principles of territorial integrity and the so-called uti possidetis to the status of established norms as counterarguments to the principle of self-determination, which in many cases led to tensions and ethnic conflicts, such as in the Congo or in the former Yugoslavia.

One consequence of the First World War and the emergence of new states in Central and Eastern Europe was the presence of German minorities in the countries of the region. There were ethnic Germans in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. It can be argued that, in practice, the German-speaking minorities in Central and Eastern Europe – even in those regions where they constituted the majority – did not enjoy the right to self-determination, which is understandable in the political context of the time. In the name of the right to self-determination, for example, the Sudeten region, which was predominantly inhabited by Germans, would have had to be annexed to Germany or Austria. The German minority’s efforts to achieve autonomy in Romania were also made in the name of the principle of self-determination. The National Socialists, who rejected the reorganisation of Central and Eastern Europe based on Wilson’s principle, invoked the right to self-determination of ethnic Germans. The expulsions of Germans that took place at the end of the Second World War are interpreted by representatives of their ethnic associations as a measure that contradicts the principle of self-determination. Consequently, in this context, the right to self-determination is posited in conjunction with a so-called ‘right to a homeland ’.

• Antonio Cassese: Self-determination of peoples. A legal reappraisal. Cambridge 1995 (Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture Series 12).
• Inis L. Claude, Jr: National minorities. An international problem. Cambridge, MS 1955.
• Mária M. Kovács: Standards on self-determination and standards of minority rights in the post-communist era. A historical perspective. In: Nations and Nationalism 9 (2003), pp. 433–450.
• Michla Pomerance: ‘The United States and self-determination: perspectives on the Wilsonian conception’. In: The American Journal of International Law 70 (1976), pp. 1–27.
• Marc Weller: Escaping the self-determination trap. Leiden 2008.

• www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/lenin/1916/01/nationen.html (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination. Theses [January–February 1916])
• www.princeton.edu/~lisd/ (Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination)

Cristian Cercel: The Right to Self-Determination. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32664 (accessed 20 September 2021).