Unescocat gathers some thirty representatives of academia, politics, business, media and civil society to discuss the evolution of the claim for the rights of stateless nations based on Jaume Hernandez Lopez's study published in the fourth issue of Quaderns de Recerca.
The conceptual and political definition of the right to self-determination in a democratic and liberal context has undergone several subtle changes,
including new approaches, justifications and implications that indicate new patterns both with regard to regulatory issues and the lines of argument adopted and in the strategic and political spheres. The emergence of a new concept, ‘the right to decide’, can be considered to reflect these new trends. However—or, perhaps, because of this—the right to decide is often confused with the right to self-determination, as if they were synonyms. This issue of Quaderns de Recerca proposes a set of theoretical bases for the right to decide, pending an explicit legal formulation, that are completely different from those of the right to selfdetermination.
One of the objectives of the UNESCO Centre of Catalonia is to promote synergies and collaborations that may help building the foundations of a genuine culture of peace, through differents kinds of actions including applied research. Unescocat aims to contribute to bringing knowledge to public institutions and civil society, because this knowledge will facilitate decision making and helf defining more efficient and sustainable initiatives and programmes . In this sense, the collection Research Papers (Quaderns de recerca) presents the results of investigations carried out by Unescocat itself, or by other persons and institutions, focussing on issues closely linked to the work of UNESCO and the United Nations. This publication (periodic, bilingual Catalan-English and digital) is intended as a tool to delve into the subject and make proposals for action.
The author of QR4, Jaume Hernandez Lopez, holds a PhD in Political Science and Public Administration (2002) and Masters in Social and Political Theory (1996) by Pompeu Fabra University, Master of Philosophy in Social Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1997) and BA in Political Science and Sociology (1993) from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is currently professor of Political and Social Sciences (UPF), consultant to the Faculty of Humanities at the Open University of Catalonia, and teaches in the Master on Policy and Social Communication at the Faculty of Communication Blanquerna (Ramon Llull University).
