About

This project will explore a range of strategies for protecting the human rights of West Papuans, with particular reference to rights to self-determination.

In 1963, West Papua New Guinea was taken over by the Indonesian government for what was supposed to be a five-year period of "temporary" rule. Following this, 1,002 out of a population of over two million voted, under significant pressure from the Indonesian military, to formally join Indonesia. West Papuans were slaughtered at the government's command, igniting the Free West Papua movement for self-determination. The oppression of West Papuans and their struggle against human rights abuses continues today.

This project will bring together philosophical and archival analysis in order to explore the coloniality of international law, bringing this to bear on an analysis of legal avenues for protecting West Papuan human rights. It deploys Georgio Agamben's analysis of signatures and Achille Mbembe's concept of Necropolitics, inspiring an archaeological study of the colonial racism inherent in the history of international law, as well as how this links to the New York Agreement that transferred authority of West Papua to Indonesia and its violent aftermath. This critical inquiry will then serve to illustrate a political-philosophical approach to the historical-legal relationship between colonialism and international law as a means of analysing the rights of indigenous peoples and the despotic state.