‘Self-Determination’ Enters International Law

Abstract

This chapter examines international understandings of ‘self-determination’ from the conclusion of the First World War up to and including the formalisation of this language in the 1945 UN Charter. The chapter uses two policy cases of people demanding self-determination to illustrate such understandings: the post-First World War case of Albania and the 1921–1922 Aaland Islands case at the League of Nations. Although both cases originated in peoples’ calls for radically legitimised ‘self-determination’, they evidenced primarily a continuation of Wilson’s conceptualisations. The League of Nations Aaland Islands case then laid the ground for the incorporation of ‘self-determination’ in international law with the 1945 UN Charter, a codification that also reflected the liberal-conservative idea. In each of these moments, however, the radical idea of freedom was present too. This post-World War One period of international ‘self-determination’ discourse thus showed the international perpetuation of the ideas that both Lenin and Wilson had associated with it, but added nothing new.