THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION. An international legal perspective on the Kurds right to self-determination in Syria

Abstract

This paper outlines the legal framework of the right to self-determination and further examines the longstanding case of Kurds' right to self-determination in Syria as an ethnic group under international law. The right to self-determination is expressed in the UN-Charter and other legal documents along with customary law and have characteristics of an erga omnes norm. Still, its application remains ambiguous under international law, especially in the context of ethnic groups claiming the right. It contains several aspects, two important aspects being the internal and external. Internal self-determination gives people a right to exercise their social, cultural, and economic rights. Likewise, it aims to give people a further involvement in their local and regional affairs. In other words, to further develop people's right to self-governance and degrees of autonomy. The external self-determination entitled peoples to decide freely their international identity and to be free from foreign interference. Kurds, as the biggest ethnic group without a state and minorities in several states in the Middle East, still have an undefined legal status under international law. Crystallizing the civil war in Syria, the Kurds in Syria established a self-governing autonomy under the name Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES). By adopting a hybrid-form of autonomy, based on the philosophical ideology of Democratic Confederalism, the administration established democratic mechanisms to strengthen the rights of the peoples of Syria.This paper examines how AANES as an entity can be viewed under international law and, through this examination, how to establish Kurds in Syria right to self-determination under international law.