"The State of New Caledonia, if it were to exist, would only be a French territorial community, devoid of sovereignty."

On July 12, a "draft agreement on the future of New Caledonia" was signed in Bougival (Yvelines). The Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) intended to obtain a written basis to submit to its authorities. The media hype surrounding this signing contrasts with the positions taken by the president of the FLNKS and the Caledonian Union, who expressed their rejection of the text . The FLNKS congress will decide on August 9. The government nevertheless announced, on July 30, the convening of a committee to draft the texts. The State seems ready to move forward in the absence of consensus with the separatists, raising the question of the very meaning of this word.

The project is based on the recognition of a simple " Kanak identity " within a "Caledonian people" who would become the political subject of self-determination. This would result in the erasure of the right to decolonization recognized to the Kanak people by international law, reduced to an indigenous cultural existence within a non-indigenous nation-state. The text does not mention the explicit recognition of the Kanak people, nor the name Kanaky, even attached to New Caledonia, nor the Kanak flag, which highlights the asymmetry of the concessions.

This project is not part of a logic of external decolonization, but of integration into the Republic through a status of internal autonomy. It refers to Resolution 2625 of the United Nations General Assembly (1970), which makes it possible to grant a political status without going through formal independence. The objective thus becomes the removal of New Caledonia from the UN list of territories to be decolonized, at a time deemed appropriate.

The recognition of a State of New Caledonia is akin to a flurry of words. According to the criteria of the Montevideo Convention (1933), a State presupposes a delimited territory, a permanent population, an effective government, and the capacity to conclude treaties. To this, the United Nations adds the possibility of unilaterally withdrawing from an association agreement, if one exists. None of these criteria are met. The State of New Caledonia, if it were to exist, would be nothing more than a French territorial collectivity, devoid of sovereignty.

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