The UK’s treatment of the Chagos Islanders has been shameful, while its treatment of places like St Helena is not much better – until ten years ago, the people of that poor and isolated island did not have the right to live in the UK. Indeed, nor did the Falkland Islanders, who only regained that right after the war. The UK was discussing sovereignty with Argentina as late as 1981, proposing a Hong Kong-style leaseback agreement.

However, the UN’s track record is far from impartial or unblemished. In 1950, it decided that Eritrea should become part of Ethiopia without an act of self-determination, as an ‘autonomous province’, only for Ethiopia to strip Eritrea of its autonomy, resulting in a 30-year long independence war. Similarly, it rubber-stamped the so-called ‘Act of Free Choice’ in West New Guinea, in which a group of hand-picked leaders voted unanimously to be part of Indonesia.

Guatemala has largely abandoned its claim to Belize, while Venezuela’s claim to the western half of Guyana as the ‘Zona de Reclamación’ is not a foreign priority, even for Hugo Chavez.

Some post-war Argentine administrations have attempted to woo the Falkland Islanders (the most notable example being the gifts of books and videos, showing the natural beauty of Argentina, to the Falkland Islanders for Christmas in 1997). This approach was greeted with bemusement by the Islanders, and while utterly futile in terms of winning hearts and minds (the Falklands have more than their share of natural beauty, quite a lot of which was rendered undisturbable by the unmarked antipersonnel minefields that Argentina had left behind in 1982) it was at least a step in the right direction from Argentina’s point of view. They were at least trying to make Argentina seem more like a tolerable neighbour than a schoolyard bully. And from there, a nation that the Falkland Islanders might want to be part of.

Under both of the Kirchners, these tiny, fragile shoots of progress have been systematicaly crushed to oblivion. All attempts at winning hearts and minds have been abandoned in favour of trying to wreck the Falkland Islands economy and virtually laying siege to them.

Now, a new generation of Falkland Islanders, too young to remember 1982, aren’t seeing Argentina as a benign if mismanaged neighbour but as an ineffectual bully who seeks to claim THEIR homes and THEIR land without any reference to them.

Understandably, they aren’t overwhelmed with enthusiasm. A prime example of which is the growth of the Falkland Islands Defence Force (FIDF) – the locally maintained volunteer reservists, which paraded about 40 current and former members in April 1982 and now stands at about 200 current members from a population of about 3,000.

Under international law there are territorial limitations to the right of self-determination for transplanted populations living in colonial enclaves. This is the case with both Gibraltar and the Falklands.

The UN has repeatedly invited the UK to participate in discussions to achieve the de-colonisation of Gibraltar and the Falklands.

Unfortunately, the UK continues to rely on a discredited interpretation of the principle of self-determination to turn a deaf ear to those requests in a clearly self-serving way.

By the way, it’s worth noting that the current British enthusiasm for the principle of self-determination in the case of Gibraltar and the Falklands was certainly not matched by the response to the inhabitants of Diego Garcia, also a British Overseas Territory, who were evicted by the UK in 1971 against their wishes because the United States wanted the island as a military base.