The Aaland Islands Question: Report of the Commission of Rapporteurs, LN Doc B7/21/68/106 (1921)

The foundational early-20th-century precedent on minority self-determination: the Commission held that the Swedish-speaking population of the Aaland Islands did not have a right to secede from Finland because Finland was capable of, and committed to, internal protection — but the Commission named the converse condition explicitly. Where a state 'has not been able, or has not shown itself disposed to, accord just treatment' to a minority, the question of separation may legitimately re-open. Cited in /case/law as the historical anchor for the remedial test that Quebec (1998) later formalised.