Argentina's Foreign Minister Hector Marcos Timerman is to lodge a protest at the UN on Friday against the UK's "militarisation" of the Falklands.
Mr Timerman is expected to hand the complaint to the secretary general and the president of the Security Council.
Last month, the UK said it was sending a destroyer to the region in March amid growing tension over the islands in a move described as "routine".
Prince William, grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and second-in-line to the throne, was also deployed to the islands in his role as a search and rescue helicopter pilot.
It has various options in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, but it is extremely unlikely that any of these would produce a legally binding outcome.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-a
OP: I saw the president do a press conference where the backdrop was a map of the islands, whose population want to remain British, in the colours of the Argentina flag. Who's the colonialist now?
Mr Timerman is expected to hand the complaint to the secretary general and the president of the Security Council.
Last month, the UK said it was sending a destroyer to the region in March amid growing tension over the islands in a move described as "routine".
Prince William, grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and second-in-line to the throne, was also deployed to the islands in his role as a search and rescue helicopter pilot.
It has various options in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, but it is extremely unlikely that any of these would produce a legally binding outcome.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-a
OP: I saw the president do a press conference where the backdrop was a map of the islands, whose population want to remain British, in the colours of the Argentina flag. Who's the colonialist now?
Legally, the right to self-determination can only be applied to the indigenous inhabitants of a place...which the current residents of the islands are not. If anything, they're two steps removed from being eligible for self-determination, not one - they're technically not even the colonists who settled the place. The British presence in the Falklands/Malvinas came about because they turned up to an Argentinean settlement that already existed and made the inhabitants leave under threat of being immediately flattened by Royal Navy ships.
It's a bit like if I turned up somewhere in the Orkneys with a sub-machine gun, chased away all the residents who were already there and twenty years later said "This is my home now. I claim self-determination. This island is not part of Britain."
You see the potential problem?
Argentina's been going to every international authority it can get at since roughtly 1834, trying to get a definitive ruling one way or the other - most of the time, they actually get the UN or whatever agreeing that there needs to be a legal ruling. Britain has thus far refused to front up before any tribunal, court, UN committee or whatever because they don't believe there's anything to discuss, long time ago, "it's ours now so suck it up", blah blah blah.
(I'm Argentinean. I don't care who gets the islands, but...seriously, Britain, if you're legally supposed to have them, you'll get to keep them. Just agree to a proper ruling one way or the other and the whole thing goes away)
Yes, it's quite obvious.
In either case, you're referencing a principle of self-determination which quite frankly does not apply here. It was meant for nations subjugated by empires, not colonizers, and to extend it to cover any current settlers in an area has pretty undesirable implications = you could claim territory by displacing the pre-existing population.
(I left Argentina when I was ten years old. I live in Britain now, with a husband seconded to the British army...honestly, I'd like this resolved so it doesn't flare up into war again one day. That's all.)
Yeah different countries might have laid claim to it before the British settlement stuck, but it's been a loooooong time since then and IMO the current islanders who have lived there for generations should be the final ones to decide. I don't see what it is to do with Argentina any more just because they had a brief claim on the islands two centuries ago :shrugs:
Everyone can put their case for sovereignty. They'll get a ruling...and having asked for this ruling, if it falls in Britain's favour, Argentina will have to accept that.
Problem solved.