Evolution of self-determination : internal self-determination and the case of Northern Ireland

Abstract

The international law's refusal to challenge the borders of Northern Ireland or to recognize the claims of Irish nationalists as anything other than those of minorities contributed to establishing the limits of self-determination claims together with the gaps that revolve around the central conundrum of who are the relevant people to decide the future, and what is the relevant territory within which to decide it. Belfast agreement has posed a good example to the argument that international community's relative silence on self-determination paradoxically also served to set broad parameters for the conflict's management. It is not only the ambiguous nature of self-determination that helped the evolutiveness of the self-determination from its external dimension towards internal dimension in the case of Northern Ireland. The practice in the management of the conflict in the province has also added to the evolutiveness of the norm by articulating the current normative trend of internal self-determination in a legal text of Belfast Agreement that managed to move away the absolute notions of statehood, sovereignty and territorial integrity through an ambiguous language which proved to be a balancing factor between two competing self-determination claims. The success of this legal practice will be proven real when this ambiguous language stops serving as an obstacle in the implementation process in the future.