Introduction: the concept of people

A discourse on the relationship between secession and self-determination starts out with a big question mark. According to all the relevant texts dealing with self-determination, all ‘peoples’ are the holders of this right. The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, the starting point for the rise of self-determination as a principle generating true legal rights, derived its moral force from the generality of its statement that ‘all peoples have the right to self-determination’. Although primarily designed to foster the decolonization process, its drafters had to enlarge its scope ratione personae in order to make the proposition more attractive to the world at large. In fact, a few years later, the formulation of common Article 1(1) within the two International Covenants on human rights left no doubt that the wording in the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was intended fully to mean what the text seemed to convey, namely, that all peoples, without any discrimination, enjoy the right of self-determination. This is also the message of the Friendly Relations Declaration, which lacked any predominant anti-colonial overtones, having been conceived as an instrument particularizing the basic principles laid down in the Charter of the United Nations as they apply to the international community in its entirety.