The Right to Self-Determination by Groups Struggling for Statehood in Post-Colonial Africa: A Constitutional Freedom or Battle?

Abstract

Just when it is thought that some peace is settling in Africa after the scourge of the 2^nd World War, there have been raging internal conflicts with groups of people within territorial boundaries of states, claiming self-rule (Self-Determination). Many conflicts around the globe generated from attempts at fractioning states. In Africa alone, there are a handful like the Biafran of Nigeria, Saharawian of Western Sahara, Katangans of Congo and the Ambazonian in Cameroon. The right to self-determination has become one of the most complex issues for African policy makers, scholars and the international community at large. Confusion surrounding the content of the right to self-determination makes people to ask whether there exists a right to self-determination. This is because this right is constitutional and is also included in international human rights conventions which fail to defined who exactly is to claim such right; a group; a people; or a nation, and what exactly this right confesses. At the same time, the international system particularly in the post-colonial era has defended the inviolability of existing national/state borders, regardless of how and when they were determined. In recent years, many groups that constitute minorities in their states have evoked the “right to self-determination” in their demands for autonomy or in some case, have resorted to violence to pursue their aims. These groups typically demand for self-determination as a way to end years of repression and human rights violations by the majority ethnic groups or the central government. Based on the challenges faced in asserting the right to self-determination, the objectives of this paper is therefore, to assess and analyze the content of the right to self-determination, evaluate the level of its acceptability and applicability, examine its assertion by groups claiming it, and examine if there exist other means of asserting such right. To attend these objectives, we adopted the doctrinal method and discovered that they are other means of asserting the right which can be through Federalism, confederation, Decentralization and not only through secession to which if they are effectively implemented, such right will be assured and sustainable as such, enhance peace and security in Africa.