Decolonization: A Right and a Moral Obligation
The statement "Decolonization is not just a right; it's an obligation" contains a profound truth that moves the conversation from political permission to ethical imperative. While international law recognizes the right to self-determination for colonized peoples, framing decolonization merely as a "right" fails to capture its full moral weight. True decolonization represents a duty—an essential reckoning with historical injustice and a necessary step toward global justice.
The Inadequacy of Rights Alone
The right to decolonization is well-established in international law, enshrined in the United Nations Charter and reinforced through numerous resolutions. However, presenting it solely as a right creates problematic implications:
- Rights can be delayed or negotiated away in political processes.
- Rights language individualizes what is fundamentally a collective historical trauma.
- A right implies something that can be claimed rather than something that must be actively redressed by the responsible parties.
When colonization is understood as an ongoing structure—not merely a historical event—its dismantling becomes a present obligation, not a deferred right.
The Obligation Framework
Decolonization as obligation encompasses three interconnected dimensions:
1. An Obligation to Historical Truth
Colonial powers have a duty to acknowledge the full extent of colonial violence, exploitation, and cultural erasure. This goes beyond symbolic apologies to comprehensive historical reckoning—recognizing that colonial histories continue to shape present inequalities in wealth, borders, and international relations.
2. An Obligation to Restorative Justice
The staggering economic extraction of colonialism created enduring global disparities. Decolonization obligates former colonizers to engage in meaningful reparations—not as charity but as restitution. This includes returning stolen artifacts, supporting sustainable development, and restructuring unfair global economic systems that perpetuate colonial patterns.
3. An Obligation to Return Agency
True decolonization requires restoring sovereignty in its fullest sense—political, economic, and cultural. This means supporting self-determination without paternalistic conditions and dismantling neocolonial structures that maintain indirect control through debt, trade agreements, or political intervention.
Decolonization as Continuous Process
Understanding decolonization as obligation recognizes that:
- It is not simply about flag independence but about dismantling enduring colonial mentalities and structures.
- It requires active participation from both colonized and colonizer societies.
- It is intergenerational work that addresses trauma and reconnects people with suppressed histories and identities.
The Global Imperative
In our interconnected world, the unfinished project of decolonization affects everyone. Climate injustice, global inequality, and cultural homogenization all have roots in colonial logic. Thus, decolonization becomes an obligation not just to specific colonized peoples, but to creating a more equitable and sustainable world for all.
Conclusion
Reframing decolonization from right to obligation transforms it from a political concession to a moral imperative. It places the burden of action where it belongs—on those who benefited from colonial systems and on all of us who inhabit structures built through colonial exploitation. As philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote about German responsibility after Nazism, some obligations are not chosen but inherited through historical position. Similarly, in a world still shaped by colonialism, working toward its undoing is not merely something we can choose to support, but something we are obliged to pursue—for justice, for healing, and for our shared future.
