What is a people for the purposes of self-determination

The right for minority groups to have their language, culture, religion or ethnicity respected by the mother state is not synonymous with the right to 

Self-determination of such groups that qualify as a people can be effectuated in different ways through self-government, autonomy, free association, or, in extreme cases, independence. Co-existence of a people within a larger central state, where the people has rights to self-government, political autonomy, 

The Aaland Islands were a small island nation situated between Finland and Sweden, belonging to the former and seeking to reunite with the latter. In fact, the Aalanders claimed that they were ethnically Swedish, and that they wished to break off from Finland and to become a part of Sweden. In an advisory opinion, the second Commission of Rapporteurs operating within the auspices of the League of Nations held, first, that this issue was properly of international, not domestic jurisdiction, and, second, that the Aalanders had a right to a cultural autonomy, which had to be exercised within Finland. Only 

Other international documents have espoused this approach and have distinguished between modes of international versus external self-determination. The 1970 Friendly Relations Declaration preconditions the right of non-colonial people to separate from an existing state on the denial of the right to a democratic self-government by the mother state.  

Other UN bodies have also referred to the right to remedial secession, such as the 1993 Report of the Rapporteur to the UN Sub-Commission Against the Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities on Possible Ways and Means of Facilitating the Peaceful and Constructive Solution of Problems Involving Minorities, and the General Recommendation XXI adopted in 1996 by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.  

---