The Method To Exercise People’s Self-determination Legitimately

The principle of the right to self-determination is one of the basic principles of modern international law and also belongs to the basic right of the human rights. It affects the process of human development after its appearance, which providing ideological weapon for the establishment of the capitalism and legal basis for the nation’s liberation after the World War II and also giving the right to pursue freedom for all people.People’s self-determination promotes the progress of human history while it also becomes the theoretical tool for the ethnic separatists which resulting of abusing the right of people’s self-determination. Referendum was always based on the theory of people’s self-determination while the character of referendum and the impact on the whole world would be different such as the Crimean referendum and the Scotland referendum in 2014. Exercising of the people’s self-determination correctly, protecting the basic human rights and preventing the abuse of people’s self-determination are the key point of modern people’s self-determination research.In modern times, there are many reasons and relative complex backgrounds that caused the abuse of people’s self-determination, while the basic reason that causing the abuse are the vagueness of the theory and the diverse practice standards. For example, the subject of people’s self-determination are people or nation; whether all the exercise of self-determination are legitimate or not. So, it is necessary to study on the theory of people’s self-determination.This article is based on the theory of international laws, according to the "United Nations Charter", international conventions and other international documents, combining with the status of contemporary development of international law and the status of contemporary development of people’s self-determination, which study on the origin of people’s self-determination, the subject of people’s self-determination, the content of people’s self-determination and so on. This article will be focus on how to exercise the people’s self-determination legitimately. Firstly, we should respect the principle of State sovereignty. Secondly, we should attach great importance to the role of UN and the same time we should prevent from the abusing of people’s self-determination.The main body of this article has four part. The first part is about the historical evolution of people’s self-determination, practice of people’s self-determination. The second part is about how to exercise people’s self-determination legitimately, including the subject, the content and the forms of people’s self-determination. The third part adopts the case analysis to compare the similarities and differences between Kosovo referendum, Crimea referendum and South Sudan referendum, Scotland referendum. The fourth part is about the specific conditions of exercising the right of people’s self-determination in the field of legal principle and the rationality.