Be it the Algerian National Liberation Front, the African National Congress in South Africa or the continued struggle of the Palestinian people, the principle of self-determination is largely central to all projects of national liberation. This paper addresses what is arguably a deficient conception of self-determination by highlighting two factors that contributed to this deficiency. The first is the re-enforcement of dependency in self-determination projects by international institutions, primarily through the Mandate System. The second is a merit-based system of conditionality for the granting of independence, accompanied by a tendency to deformalize the law, relegating self-determination to an empty principle, the substance of which is decided by the negotiations’ context. The case of Palestine is used to demonstrate how those factors are adopted as central means in resolving the Palestinian self-determination problem, which in-turn leads to a deficient conception that does not account for the core content of the right.

Be it the Algerian National Liberation Front, the African National Congress in South Africa or the continued struggle of the Palestinian people, the principle of self-determination is largely central to all projects of national liberation. This paper addresses what is arguably a deficient conception of self-determination by highlighting two factors that contributed to this deficiency. The first is the re-enforcement of dependency in self-determination projects by international institutions, primarily through the Mandate System. The second is a merit-based system of conditionality for the granting of independence, accompanied by a tendency to deformalize the law, relegating self-determination to an empty principle, the substance of which is decided by the negotiations’ context. The case of Palestine is used to demonstrate how those factors are adopted as central means in resolving the Palestinian self-determination problem, which in-turn leads to a deficient conception that does not account for the core content of the right.