Page:The Future of the Falkland Islands and Its People.pdf/24

 the Islands themselves, and the British Government on the other hand exercising Falklands sovereignty internationally. Neither Argentina nor the UN could be parties to this bilateral business.

Any recognition of the Falklands self-determination by third parties like the UN is desirable but not crucial at all. While such recognition will come inevitably in the context of more global political developments expanding the practice of selfdetermination worldwide, it is

nevertheless worth keeping the pressure on the UN Decolonization Committee for recognition and abandonment of its double standards. The UN involvement is useful in countries like Western Sahara or Timor, where there could hardly have been any self-determination without it. However, all the other ‘non self-governing territories’ presently monitored by the UN Decolonization Committee are exercising their right of self-determination regardless of any UN sponsorship. A comparison between the Freedom House annual ratings of the 'decolonized' (the present 16 territories subject to UN ‘decolonization’) and their 'decolonizers' (the 24 members of the Decolonization Committee) would suggest that the former are three times more democratic than the latter. And surely, as much better off, too.

To cap it all, the 'decolonizers' themselves happen to administer such territories as Tibet (China), West Papua or Irian Jaya (Indonesia), Kashmir (India) and Chechnya (Russia), where democracy is scarce and self-determination denied. Naturally, the 16 UN-labeled 'non self-governing territories' seek to adopt the high standards of their respective 'administering powers', i.e. those of Britain, the USA, France and New Zealand, rather than those of Cuba, Iraq, China, Congo, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and other Committee members. Nevertheless, the UN Decolonization Committee could be useful in educating the people of the UK Overseas Territories about the available legitimate options of self-determination other than independence and full integration, thereby compensating for the present somewhat narrow-minded insistence by the Foreign Office that any devolution of more power would be granted only within the context of a timetable for independence.

The Argentine sovereignty claim cannot be an obstacle to the Falklands self-determination either. Such claims may exist before the self-determination and continue to stay in place for some time after its exercise, as demonstrated by the precedents of Mayotte,