The Interlinkage between Understandings of Self-Determination and Understandings of Peace
The Interlinkage between Understandings of Self-Determination and Understandings of Peace
There are two (not mutually exclusive) understandings of self-determination: a ‘thin’ one and a ‘thick’ one. The thin understanding focuses on secession; the thick understanding focuses on participation within the same state. In the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) used both conceptions of self-determination. This chapter argues that the two understandings of self-determination correspond to two different understandings of peace and that in Sudan’s particular experience only self-determination in its thin sense, which corresponds to negative peace and not positive peace, was implemented in resolving the southern Sudan-northern Sudan conflict, explaining much of what followed. The chapter analyses the CPA and its implementation, as well as the two main constitutions that reflected its provisions, with the objective of examining the different understandings of self-determination that they incorporated, the conceptions of peace that correspond to them and how they were interlinked, and how this determined the degree of success in realizing peace through self-determination.
Keywords: self-determination, positive peace, negative peace
British Academy Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
