Topic: Determining the Legitimacy of Secession Movements and Obligations of Parent States
Country: New Zealand
Delegate Name: Ethan O’Sullivan
School: Fishers High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All New Zealand position papers GLIMUN 2016 committees
As a former colony of Great Britain, New Zealand supports vassal states moving towards autonomous rule. States with due cause seeking economic, cultural, and political independence from a parent state deserve legitimate recognition and support from its parent state. First, the factors contributing to a legitimate secessionist movement should be declared.
A seceding state should have clear reasons behind its desire to separate. These include, but are not limited to economic exploitation/inequality of the seceding state or significant abuse of human rights by the parent state. Additionally, if the seceding state is a vestigial colony from a former empire, like what has been observed in the concession of Hong Kong by the United Kingdom in 1997, an event which marked the end of the British Empire, then the secessionist movement is also valid.
The responsibility of a parent state is to, above all, ensure a peaceful secession. If tensions between separatists and parent states are allowed to boil over, chaos and war result. One example of a failure to uphold peace during a secession is the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. While the armed conflict resulted in the foundation of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, a state officially recognized as a sovereign nation by the United Nations, its sovereignty was not achieved without the instigation of the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide, in which an estimate of 200,000 to 3,000,000 died as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan attempted to quell the Bangladeshi Nationalist movement in a severe abuse of human rights.
Without the peaceful separation of a legitimate state seeking secession from a parent state, that legitimate secessionist state cannot achieve the financial and cultural prosperity it desires. Moreover, it is in direct violation of Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty
Sources
http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
http://www.constitution.org/cs_separ.htmb
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0630.html
