national self-determination

Cultural  

1. Creation of national governmental institutions by a group of people who view themselves as a distinct nation (for example, because they have a common language). National self-determination is opposed to colonialism and imperialism. (See Fourteen Points.)

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Example Sentences

Robert Lansing, Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state, predicted that the promise of national self-determination that was used to justify many of the new states’ borders “will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until it was too late to check those who attempt to put the principle into force.”

From New York Times

During the First World War, as Britain invaded and captured the territory from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, it drew on growing forces of national self-determination.

From BBC

Thunderstruck at this disclosure, Du Bois partnered with Diagne and parlayed his role as a foreign correspondent into facilitating the monumental Pan-African Congress of 1919 in Paris, which connected people of African descent in the global diaspora and enabled them to formulate an agenda for decolonization and national self-determination.

From Washington Post

It helped draft the 2018 Nation-State Law, which removed Arabic as an official language and asserted that the “right of national self-determination” in Israel “is unique to the Jewish people.”

From Washington Post

National self-determination becomes a cruel joke.

From Salon