West Papua has been a territory of Indonesia since it was annexed by the Southeast Asian country in 1962. Before then, it was a Dutch colony and has been a UN Trust territory. However, West Papuans have continuously agitated for independence on the basis of their distinct ethnic, cultural and religious diversity to the majority of Indonesia.

West Papua is not recognised by the UN to be a Non-Self-Governing Territory (NSGT). However, there have been ongoing violent and passive protests and movements calling for independence.

The Charter of the United Nations, signed in 1945, is the constitutive instrument of the organisation, which provides for the powers invested in different bodies within the UN. However, the language is – as with most UN documents – aspirational, and its often vague nature is conducive to broad interpretations.

Under international law, treaties and instruments create an obligation for States to decolonise foreign territories. Yet despite this comprehensive body of law prohibiting colonisation (both outright and as a consequence of its effect on the right to self-determination and sovereignty), there are still cases in modern geopolitics where one State is an imperial power over a foreign territory.

Despite being an important part of our societies with a great potential for fostering peace, youth voices often remain unheard, especially in multilateral settings. Peace and security issues were dealt with, thought through, and discussed only among senior experts until recently.

Unlike other liberal democracies, Australia’s legal protection of human rights is not through a Bill of Rights or human rights legislation, but through various Constitutional, common law and statutory protections.

Whilst the decision in the Chagos advisory opinion creates no legally enforceable outcomes, its jurisprudence and its redefinition of the right to self-determination will be relevant to future ICJ decisions on self-determination.

The title of this article may, at first glance, seem ironic or unrealistic. Indeed, imagining links between business, human rights and peace may be inconceivable for the obvious reason that the protection of human dignity and the maintenance and preservation of peace are generally the responsibility of states. However, the debate on the need for corporate responsibility to incorporate respecting human rights is not new.

Negotiation’s dynamic nature and general applicability means it is adapted to resolving a large portion of international disputes. This is evidenced by the fact negotiation is the most commonly employed tool for settling international disputes. Unlike more rigid forms of dispute resolution, such as judicial arbitration through legal proceedings before the ICJ, forms of negotiation occur daily in non-formal settings.

As the years pass and younger generations grow up in a de-facto partitioned Cyprus, it will increasingly become less-likely that Cyprus will be unified in the future. While parties to the Cyprus issue prepare for their meeting with UNSG Guterres this April, they should also prepare for the likely reality that the “frozen conflict”-zone of Cyprus will remain in a state of political limbo, akin to Western Sahara and the Palestinian Territories.