Right to Self-Determination

Does everyone have the right to choose their own destiny? I firmly believe the answer to this question is yes. Concerning a community, do they have the same right of choice? The importance of the question lay in the right of choice. In practice, the possible right of choice of a community or outcome of self-determination often determines responses of a government. Even though, self-determination is an international law and right of process that belongs to the people and not to states or governments, this is being ignored by Colombia’s government, who firmly decided not to listen to the claim of the people, who struggle for political, economical, cultural, and social autonomy. The Raizal people of San Andres Island have the right of choice to self-determination.

Self-determination of people is a right recognized in International Law. The law makes of it a universal principle. The principle of self-determination is in Article I of the Charter of the United Nations. It also forms part of the hard law that had been affirmed by the International Meeting of Experts for the Elucidation of the Concepts of Rights of Peoples brought together by UNESCO. As a result of it, self-determination is recognized as a right of all people to voluntarily define their political situation and liberally make decisions concern value of the land and use of the territory.

Nationalism system creates laws and regulates them. These facts cause pressure, tension, intolerance, violence and anxiety in a society. For more than one hundred years the island has retained his identity because of geographical isolation. During the last fifty years, Colombia’s government is re-enforcing a nationalism authority with regulation and laws. This system has c...

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... itself, is a tough political topic the central government always seems to avoid, but the self-determination movement keeps it alive. Regardless, the island is governed under a democratic system, islanders don’t participate in it. Actually, there are others who design their political and social systems and economic policies. They neither have right to protest or to decide over their natural resources. As a community they kept belaboring the perspective of self-determination for long time, and still there are groups that don’t understand the perspective of it, and prefer to keep being part of Colombia, they choose personal ambition, instead of the community benefits. It is not the islander of San Andres goal as community to be perpetual governs by others they seek to have control of their lives by choice legitimate option of self-determination. It is their right.