2023-06-13 16:44:04
Eighteen months after the third no in the independence referendum of New Caledonia, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) confirmed to the United Nations (UN), Monday, June 12, that it wished to seize the Court International Justice (ICJ), to ask him to decide whether the right to self-determination of New Caledonians had been violated by the holding of the consultation during the Covid pandemic. This final plea could serve as leverage for the separatists, engaged with the state and the loyalists in the political negotiation of the exit from the Nouméa agreement of 1998, but could also potentially turn into a thorn in the side of Paris.
“International bodies are our last resort to safeguard the rights of the colonized people, since French law has failed in this mission”told the Monde Magalie Tingal-Lémé, FLNKS representative at the UN. The separatists had called for this third referendum, before asking for its postponement when it had been set for December 12, 2021, then boycotting it. “The pandemic has particularly decimated our Kanak population, we wanted to respect the bereavement”she explained.
As this last referendum cannot be canceled since it has already been validated by the Council of State, the independence organization prefers “more subtly” ask the ICJ to rule on the respect of his right to self-determination. To do this, it needs a country or a group of countries to take up its cause, present a resolution and vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations for a referral to the Court.
Decolonization Audit
Magalie Tingal-Lémé thus asked Monday the Committee for the decolonization of the UN – nicknamed the “C24” – to support the approach of the FLNKS. Since 1986, the C24 has regularly measured the progress of the decolonization of New Caledonia – on Monday, it also received representatives of the three movements opposed to independence and the French ambassador to the United Nations, Nicolas de Rivière.
This request, which the independence representative describes as a “new dispute between the colonized people and the administrative power”contrast with the image of “good student of decolonization” from which France benefits at the UN, and to which it values.
The international support that the FLNKS will rally to its cause will also certainly influence the concessions that it will demand from the State – a possible additional advantage for the independence movement, which sometimes plays for time by refusing to confirm its participation in future tripartite meetings with the state and the non-independentists.
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