One of the cornerstones of human rights and global justice discussions is the notion that peoples have each an inalienable right to self-determination, be that separation, decolonization, and so on. And this is a notion that I support in principle, because the opposite choice is majoritarian domination, colonialism, and other evils.
The problem is, however, that situations are more complicated than that: a self-determination claim usually contains a territory claim. And a territory may have other groups on it that themselves have a right to self-determination. So self-determination, a validation of rights, necessarily itself entail privileging the rights of one people over possible others.
We see this story many times. Québec nationalists, for instance, always claim that minorities in Québec do not meet the criteria for nationhood, which are usually indistinguishable from a description of Québec's specific situation. This is a mild version, but there are in other parts of the world much more lethal variants of this problem.
But here is an opportunity to point out another twist: Feministe notes that the new Iraqi constitution risks curtailing women's rights due to provisions that may puts aspects of those rights in the hands of conservative religious exigetes. In other cases where a minority within a minority has conflicting interests with the self-determining outer minority, the dispute is often over territory or cultural and linguistic expression, and can be solved territorially or through constitutional measures designed to carve out a separate political/cultural space for the inner minority.
In this case, for some reason women are harder to separate from the population: at some point men and women must interact. And part of the self-determination of Iraqis has to be in the legislation they pass regarding how their society is going to be run. And part of that legislation has to do with relations between men and women, such as divorce and custody law. But that self-determination now may have an effect on women's autonomy in the same manner as described above. But we cannot solve the problem by carving out self-determining provisions for women, since all the disputed areas involve men in some way!
So is this another flaw in the notion of self-determination of peoples as a component of global justice? Is it possible to resolve this conflict with gender equality? Which takes precedence, democracy or human rights?
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