Page:The Future of the Falkland Islands and Its People.pdf/38

 themselves, and are granted to Falkland Islanders de facto by United Kingdom law and the Charter of the United Nations goes right to the heart of the weakness of their case. The islanders, like the majority of their mainland counterparts, are also descended from European settlers of colonial territory. What they claim is no more nor less than equal rights to self-determination. In point of fact the families of some islanders have lived in the Falklands in many cases for more generations than those of their modern Argentine counterparts whose origins as Argentine citizens can be traced firmly back to recent 19th and 20th century European immigration.

Furthermore even if hypothetically Argentina had succeeded in 1982 in maintaining hegemony over the Falklands the Islands would still have qualified for self-determination under the UN Charter because of its peoples separate ethnic identity and its geographical uniqueness as a completely separate territory from the Argentine state. This is a reality that Argentina chooses to ignore.

For Argentina to deny the right of self-determination to Falkland Islanders is therefore is to call into question their own historical claim to the same process.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, which gives some context to the present claim, I wholeheartedly agree that the most reasonable path of all is to look forward to what the future could hold rather than looking back into the past calling upon historical events, real or imagined, to support a political position. The foregoing comments therefore are not intended to call upon history to prove the Falklands right to self-determination, modern practice in comparable situations does that well enough, but merely to give historical perspective to the opinions expressed in support of the claim.

It is much more productive in seeking political solutions to be informed by the past rather than being its prisoner and being controlled by it, a position amply exemplified by Dr Ivanov’s possible definitive solutions.

Solution #1 that Dr. Ivanov expounds, whereby the Argentine interest in the Islands diminishes over the years to the point where it becomes purely notional seems to me to be an ideal but, in the present climate of continued Argentine strident nationalism this seems remote, there may well be diminished confrontation over a period, but will it ever be diminished enough to amount to a situation of normality between islanders and Argentines? Though unpredictable, history so far does not seem to favour any substantial benefit from this scenario in the shorter term.