The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, which the United Nations high commissioner for human rights has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” highlights a problem that the world has not yet figured out how to solve — and that can contribute, in extremes, to the world’s worst atrocities.

National self-determination, the idea that a nation should have the right to freely choose its political status, is a central tenet of the international system. It is enshrined in Article 1 of the United Nations Charter, which states that its purpose is “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.”

But scholars have long recognized that there is a problem inherent in self-determination that can make it an enemy of the freedoms it is intended to protect.