UNPO has collaborated with the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy through its Justice Capstone Seminar on a student-led research project examining how self-determination movements use narratives, media, and information to advance their causes in an era of widespread information disorder. The resulting report, Determining the Narrative: The Use of Narratives, (Mis)Information, and Media for Unrepresented Nations and Peoples in the 21st Century, was prepared by Tara Almosawi, Thea Baines, and Taj Donville-Outerbridge under the supervision of Dr. David Zarnett, and draws on case studies of Palestine, Western Sahara, and Somaliland, supplemented by a survey of UNPO member movements from across the globe.
The report makes clear that for unrepresented nations and peoples, the struggle for self-determination is not only about autonomy or sovereignty — it is also about meaning. Dominant powers exercise disproportionate control over how self-determination movements are named, framed, and rendered legible to international audiences, and information disorder — the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation — can distort or erase a movement’s claims before they ever reach sympathetic audiences. At the same time, the report demonstrates that narrative power can be reclaimed. Movements that define their own struggle, ground their claims in international law and human rights, and build sustained communication infrastructure have achieved measurable shifts in public opinion and international recognition.
The three case studies illustrate the range of ways information disorder operates in practice. In the Palestinian case, mainstream Western media has systematically prioritised Israeli perspectives, attaching delegitimising qualifiers to Palestinian institutions, reporting deaths asymmetrically, and suppressing legal terms such as “genocide” and “occupied territory” through editorial guidelines. In response, the Palestinian movement has grounded its counternarrative in human rights law and citizen journalism, contributing to a documented and historic shift in Western public opinion. In Somaliland, information disorder operates not through fabrication but through the routine use of language — “breakaway region,” “self-declared,” “unrecognised” — that embeds the territorial-integrity presumption into coverage before a claim can even be evaluated. The report identifies the consistent absence of the 1988 Isaaq genocide from international reporting as one of Somaliland’s most significant narrative vulnerabilities. In Western Sahara, the normalisation of stalemate has depoliticised occupation, making the denial of self-determination appear technical and inevitable rather than the product of sustained political choices.
A survey of eight UNPO member movements — including East Turkestan, Catalonia, Khmer-Krom, Gilgit-Baltistan, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Brittany, Western Togoland and Hong Kong — confirmed that these patterns are widely shared. Across movements, the most prominent challenges are crafting effective narratives, countering mis- and disinformation, and developing social media strategy.
The report’s findings informed a practical media toolkit, developed alongside the research, which provides concrete, evidence-based guidance for movements seeking to communicate their goals and counter misrepresentation. Based on the case studies and survey, the report sets out six strategic recommendations for self-determination movements navigating hostile information environments: own your frame before others claim it; name and disrupt depoliticising language; diversify stories and storytellers; tailor messages to different audiences without losing the core self-determination claim; protect internal credibility as a narrative asset; and build long-term narrative infrastructure that sustains visibility between crisis moments, not only during them.
UNPO reaffirms that narrative justice is an inseparable dimension of political justice. The misrepresentation of self-determination movements — through asymmetrical reporting, the suppression of legal language, and the normalisation of occupation — is not incidental. It is a mechanism through which the denial of self-determination is legitimised in the public sphere. UNPO remains committed to amplifying the voices of unrepresented and marginalised peoples, challenging the structures that silence them, and supporting the development of the narrative infrastructure through which their claims can be heard, understood, and acted upon by the international community.
