SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLE FOR WHOM, PALE FACE?

DECOLONIAL CRITICS FROM REALITIES OF EAST TIMOR AND WESTERN SAHARA

Abstract

In view of the substantial value attributed to the principle of self-determination by international society, which radiates in the internal political-juridical agendas of the most varied States of the world, the present research aims to question the understanding of the mentioned principle as a consensually agreed construct, universally applied right, undeniably emancipatory principle and deliberately granted by States considered capable of self-government as an attribute of equality – “I recognize you as a State because you own the same characteristics that I have”. From the methodological point of view, this research consists of a qualitative study, supported by the discussion of the realities faced by East Timor and Western Sahara and carried out through a bibliographic and document review guided by the decolonial epistemological framework. In the end, it was evident that the elaboration and instrumentalization of self-determination occurs within the framework of modern-colonial precepts and, once forged by hegemonic States, it is manipulated according to the international interests that best assist them. Still, it is a principle that enunciates the possibility and the right to inhabit dissident bodies and spaces in the global village – which, at least from a symbolic point of view, alludes to a process of recognition of equality that, in turn, is intricate to the acquisition of freedom –, but it is not concerned with perceiving and mitigating the risks of the political-legal act of self-determination. The realities faced by East Timor and Western Sahara have, therefore, demonstrated that in spaces where the international arena gives way to its still modern-colonial structuring, coloniality and imperiality proliferate and perpetuate themselves, emptying the supposedly emancipatory normative content of self-determination.