Kashmir, people and the egalitarian shared sovereignty
Kashmir,
like any other TERRITORIAL DISPUTE has to do with an international territorial
dispute or sovereignty difference that is heavily influenced by domestic
realities. In addition to the domestic context, India and Pakistan (these posts
did not include China in particular for the sake of simplicity only) have their
own internal, regional and international agendas.
Moreover, their state leaders
have their own domestic agendas and in many cases, a when politicians aim to
obtain a position of power (or simply to maintain their influence) they use
TERRITORIAL DISPUTES such as Kashmir as a means to an end.
For
these and many other reasons, this kind of conflicts remain unresolved. The
past few posts are a modest attempt to conduct a theoretical experiment leaving
aside elements that may cause bias when evaluating possible ways to solve the
particular TERRITORIAL DISPUTE: Kashmir. It may be argued that such attempt is
Utopia or so ideal that results futile. Yet, it is a valid attempt to look for,
at least in theory, what politicians and scholars on both sides of the disputes
seem to ignore: a solution.
To
recapitulate, the egalitarian shared sovereignty (Núñez 2017) would involve recognizing the sovereignty over
Kashmir of both India and Pakistan. In terms of population, the only ones
affected would be the Kashmiris, who would be nationals of both States.
Furthermore, their basic non-political liberties must be respected by both India
and Pakistan. Hence, they would have rights in both States, as nationals. They
would be equal before the law with any Pakistani or Indian citizen and no
discrimination on any grounds would be permitted. As a direct consequence, they
would have the right to freely move and reside in any of the three
territories—respecting local regulations.
The
status of Kashmiri national, its acquisition and retention would have to be
agreed amongst the parties. Finally, there would be immigration controls to
prevent people from moving to Kashmir in order to obtain rights in India or
Pakistan that they could not obtain directly. The particulars in relation to
law will be reviewed later in this series about TERRITORIAL DISPUTES when
dealing with government.
This
example shows that divisions of religion, language and ethnicity are not
obstacles to shared sovereignty, provided that India, Kashmir and Pakistan
respect the pre-requisites: a) non-interference or non-domination; b)
non-political liberties; and c) principles of the law of peoples. Furthermore,
shared sovereignty offers a viable way to do it when these three parties
acknowledge their qualitative differences—e.g. larger population, stronger
economy, only to name a few. Moreover, it secures a permanent feature because
of the mutual controls and reciprocal concessions, both things that aim for
equilibrium amongst all the parties.
NOTE:
This post is based on Jorge Emilio Núñez, “Territorial Disputes and State
Sovereignty: International Law and Politics,” London and New York: Routledge,
Taylor and Francis Group, 2020 (forthcoming)
Previous
published research monograph about territorial disputes and sovereignty by the
author, Jorge Emilio Núñez, “Sovereignty Conflicts and International Law and
Politics: A Distributive Justice Issue,” London and New York: Routledge, Taylor
and Francis Group, 2017.
NEXT
POST: Kashmir, issues at stake and domestic, regional and international
contexts
Wednesday 09th October 2019
Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez
Twitter: @London1701
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