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The term minority rights embodies two separate concepts: first, normal individual right
Right

Rights are legal or moral entitlements or permissions. Rights are of vital importance in theories of justice and deontology.Many contemporary notions of rights are Universality and egalitarianism, with equal rights granted to all people....
s as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or sexual minorities, and second, collective rights accorded to minority groups. The term may also apply simply to individual rights of anyone who is not part of a majority decision.

Civil rights movement
Civil rights movement

The Civil Rights Movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring approximately between 1960 to 1980. It was accompanied by much civil unrest and popular rebellion....
s often seek to ensure that individual rights are not denied on the basis of membership in a minority group.

There are many political bodies which also feature minority group rights.






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The term minority rights embodies two separate concepts: first, normal individual right
Right

Rights are legal or moral entitlements or permissions. Rights are of vital importance in theories of justice and deontology.Many contemporary notions of rights are Universality and egalitarianism, with equal rights granted to all people....
s as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or sexual minorities, and second, collective rights accorded to minority groups. The term may also apply simply to individual rights of anyone who is not part of a majority decision.

Civil rights movement
Civil rights movement

The Civil Rights Movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring approximately between 1960 to 1980. It was accompanied by much civil unrest and popular rebellion....
s often seek to ensure that individual rights are not denied on the basis of membership in a minority group.

There are many political bodies which also feature minority group rights. This might be seen in affirmative action
Affirmative action

The term affirmative action refers to policies that take gender, race, or ethnicity into account in an attempt to promote equal opportunity. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and public contracting to educational outreach and health programs ....
 quotas, or in guaranteed minority representation in a consociational state
Consociational state

Political science define a consociational state as a state which has major internal divisions along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, with none of the divisions large enough to form a majority group, yet nonetheless manages to remain stable, due to consultation among the elites of each of its major social groups....
.

Minority Rights in National and International Law


The first minority rights were created by Diet
Diet

Diet, in relation to food, might mean:* Diet , the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group.* Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake....
 of Hungary
Hungary

Hungary , officially in English the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia....
 in 1849. Minority rights, as applying to ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples, are an integral part of international human rights law
International human rights law

International human rights law is a system of laws, both domestic, regional and international, designed to promote human rights. Human rights law is made up of various international human rights instruments which are binding to its parties ....
. Like children's rights
Children's rights

A Childs rights are the human rights of children with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to the young, including their right to association with both biological parents, Human nature as well as the basic needs for food, universal state-paid education, health care and criminal laws appropriate for the age...
, women's rights
Women's rights

The term women's rights refers to Freedom and entitlements of women and girls of all ages. These rights may or may not be institutionalized, ignored or suppressed by law, local custom, and behavior in a particular society....
 and refugee
Refugee

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecutionOwing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality,...
 rights, minority rights are a legal framework designed to ensure that a specific group which is in a vulnerable, disadvantaged or marginalised position in society, is able to achieve equality and is protected from persecution. The first post-war international treaty to protect minorities, designed to protect them from the greatest threat to their existence, was the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951....
.

Subsequent human rights standards that codify minority rights include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a United Nations treaty based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created in 1966 and coming into force on 23 March 1976....
 (Article 27), the United Nations
United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, Social change, human rights and achieving world peace....
 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, two Council of Europe
Council of Europe

The Council of Europe is the oldest international organisation working towards European integration, having been founded in 1949. It has a particular emphasis on legal standards, human rights, democracy development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation....
 treaties (the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities

In February 1995, 22 member States of the Council of Europe, signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities .The Council of Europe first discussed according specific protection for national minorites in 1949, but it was not until 1990 that the Council of Europe made a firm commitment to protect these minority gro...
 and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European treaty adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional language and minority languages in Europe....
, and the OSCE Copenhagen Document of 1990.

Minority rights cover protection of existence, protection from discrimination and persecution, protection and promotion of identity, and participation in political life.

To protect minority rights, many countries have specific laws and/or commissions or ombudsman
Ombudsman

An ombudsman is an official, usually appointed by government or by a non-governmental public body, who is charged with investigating complaints by citizens and, where possible, resolving them, usually by making recommendations but sometimes through mediation....
 institutions (for example the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for National and Ethnic Minorities Rights).

While initially, the United Nations treated indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples

File:Kaiapos.jpegThe term indigenous peoples or autochthonous peoples can be used to describe any ethnic group of people who inhabit a geographic region with which they have the earliest known historical connection, alongside immigrants which have populated the region and which are greater in number....
 as a sub-category of minorities, there is an expanding body of international law specifically devoted to them, in particular Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization
International Labour Organization

The International Labour Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland....
 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (adopted 14 September 2007).

Attempts to codify the rights of sexual minorities in international human rights law have met with strong opposition from a number of member states of the United Nations.

See also

  • Civil rights
    Civil rights

    Civil and political rights are a class of rights ensuring things such as the protection of peoples' physical integrity; procedural fairness in law; protection from discrimination based on sexism, religious intolerance, Racism, Homophobia, etc; individual freedom of freedom of belief, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom...
  • Human rights
    Human rights

    Human rights refer to the "basic rights and freedom to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of speech, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, i...
  • Minority Rights Group International
    Minority Rights Group International

    Minority Rights Group International is an organisation founded with the objective of promoting respect for the human rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples around the world....
  • Ethnic group
    Ethnic group

    An ethnic group is a group of humans whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or presumed.Ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness and the recognition of common culture, linguistic, religion, human behaviour or Race traits, real or presumed, as indic...
  • Minority religion
    Minority religion

    A minority religion is a religion held by a Minority group of the population of a country, state, or region. Minority religions may be subject to Social stigma or discrimination....
  • Ethnic war
    Ethnic war

    An ethnic conflict or ethnic war is a war between ethnic groups often as a result of ethnic nationalism. They are of interest because of the apparent prevalence since the Cold War and because they frequently result in war crimes such as genocide....
  • European Centre for Minority Issues
    European Centre for Minority Issues

    The European Centre for Minority Issues is a research institute based in Flensburg, Germany, that conducts research into Minority group-majority relations in Europe....
  • Teaching for social justice
    Teaching for social justice

    Teaching for social justice is an philosophy of education that proponents argue teaches for justice and Social equality all learners in all educational settings....
  • Tyranny of the majority
    Tyranny of the majority

    The phrase tyranny of the majority, used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule, is a criticism of the scenario in which decisions made by a majority under that system would place that majority's interests so far above a minority's interest as to be comparable to "Tyrant" Despotism....
  • Social stratification
    Social stratification

    In sociology and anthropology, social stratification is the hierarchy arrangement of social classes, castes and strata within a society. While these hierarchies are not universal to all societies, they are the norm among state-level cultures ....


External links

    • , United Nations Working Group on Minorities
  • OSCE
  • OSCE
  • Congress of the Council of Europe Recommendation 222 (2007) [https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1144741&BackColorInternet=e0cee1&BackColorIntranet=e0cee1&BackColorLogged=FFC679 Language Education in Regional or Minority Languages]


Bibliography

  • Thornberry, P. 1991. International Law and the Rights of Minorities. Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • Barzilai, G. 2003. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • Henrard, K. 2000. Devising an Adequate System of Minority Protection: Individual Human Rights, Minority Rights, and the Right to Self-Determination. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
  • Jackson Preece, J. 2005. Minority Rights: Between Diversity and Community. Cambridge: Polity Press
  • Pentassuglia, G. 2002. Minorities in international law : an introductory study. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publications