City University of New York-Graduate Center doctoral student Mark Drury, with the guidance of Dr. Gary Wilder, will research the process and effects of applying - or attempting to apply - the legal doctrine of self-determination in the context of decolonization. This proposal examines UN-led efforts during the 1990s to hold a referendum on self-determination in the Non-Self-Governing Territory of Western Sahara. By focusing on the formation and workings of the UN mission's Identification Commission, this research will consider the significance of self-determination from the perspective of both UN planners and those who participated in the registration process, including: "identification" sheikhs tasked with authorizing or denying the oral testimony of prospective voters, government-appointed observers, and prospective voters themselves. Drury's research will contribute to understandings of how international legal concepts rely upon anthropological forms of knowledge in order to be applied in particular contexts. In addition, his attention to the failure of this particular attempt to apply self-determination will investigate the role of international law in resolving or sustaining political conflict. Where most studies focus on the limitations to international law as a problem of sovereignty and jurisdiction, this research will focus on the possibilities of, and limitations to, the legal concepts themselves.
Drury will undertake 12 months of fieldwork, splitting time between New York, Laâyoune, Western Sahara, and a Polisario-run refugee camp in Algerian territory. He will collect data through (1) interviews with former personnel involved in MINURSO, UN's mission to Western Sahara, and its Identification Commission; (2) archival research of UN documents regarding the referendum planning process; (3) semi-structured interviews and oral histories from participants from all levels of the Identification Commission process; and (4) ethnographic observations from participant observation in private and public settings.
The findings of this research will be relevant to political scientists and historians interested in the dynamics of decolonization, as well as to practitioners and scholars of political conflict and conflict resolution mechanisms. The research contributes to the training of a graduate student in anthropology.
