This important volume brings together a range of material in different areas of law and the social sciences that address questions concerning the rights of minorities. The discipline is arguably one of the oldest branches of public international law, and owes its heritage to those who struggled to create standards to protect the numerically inferior and non-dominant communities from the excesses of the majority. While reflecting this rich heritage, the works contained in this volume show the extent to which policy constructs (especially in law) have begun to pay heed to the need to include minorities in different domestic settings across the globe. To provide readers with a structured approach to understanding global minority rights law the editor divides the issues into six main headings, namely: Historical Development; Conceptual Development; Contemporary Challenges; Fundamental Norms of Minority Protection; Specific Rights of Minorities; Human Rights and Minority Rights.

Globalization and “Minority” Cultures: The Role of “Minor” Cultural Groups in Shaping Our Global Future is a collective work which brings to the forefront of global studies new perspectives on the relationship between globalization and the experiences of cultural minorities worldwide.

Winner of the American Sociological Association's 2019 Asia and Asian American Section Book Award Winner of the American Sociological Association's 2019 Political Sociology Section Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award Since the late 1970s, the three most salient minority groups in Japan - the politically dormant Ainu, the active but unsuccessful Koreans, and the former outcaste group of Burakumin - have all expanded their activism despite the unfavorable domestic political environment. In Rights Make Might, Kiyoteru Tsutsui examines why, and finds an answer in the galvanizing effects of global human rights on local social movements. Tsutsui chronicles the transformative impact of global human rights ideas and institutions on minority activists, which changed their understandings about their standing in Japanese society and propelled them to new international venues for political claim making. The global forces also changed the public perception and political calculus in Japan over time, catalyzing substantial gains for their movements. Having benefited from global human rights, all three groups repaid their debt by contributing to the consolidation and expansion of human rights principles and instruments outside of Japan. Drawing on interviews and archival data, Rights Make Might offers a rich historical comparative analysis of the relationship between international human rights and local politics that contributes to our understanding of international norms and institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.

This book explores the ways in which minority groups across the world are reshaping the international minority rights protection system. It documents the actions of four major groups that are using transnational social mobilisation to achieve recognition of their identities and their rights. The result is a greater pluralism in global identity politics and a wide range of new group-specific standards that can inform policies on multiculturalism, political participation, and socio-economic inclusion in the national and international spheres. The book begins by summarising the learning from the global movements of indigenous peoples and Roma. The book then focuses in greater depth on the cases of Afro-descendants in Latin America and of Dalits and caste-affected groups in South Asia and beyond. Each case study shows the historical roots of group-specific transnational mobilisation and how activists have constructed a distinct identity frame out of shared experiences. The book explores key parallels and differences between the discourse, framing strategies, organisational structures and political opportunities used in each case to show which factors have influenced the success or failures of their norm entrepreneurship. The role that international institutions have played in supporting these efforts is given special attention, including intergovernmental bodies such as the UN, the EU and the OAS, and international non-governmental organisations. The UN World Conference Against Racism is explored as a particularly significant political opportunity across the cases. Among academic audiences, this book will appeal to those researching minority rights, social movements, global governance, discrimination and multiculturalism from legal, political, sociological and critical theory perspectives. It will also interest practitioners and activists working on minority rights and the challenges of norm compliance, socio-economic inclusion and governance.

Within the Middle East there are a wide range of minority groups outside the mainstream religious and ethnic culture. This book provides a detailed examination of their rights as minorities within this region, and their changing status throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The rights of minorities in the Middle East are subject to a range of legal frameworks, having developed in part from Islamic law, and in recent years subject to international human rights law and institutional frameworks. The book examines the context in which minority rights operate within this conflicted region, investigating how minorities engage with (or are excluded from) various sites of power and how state practice in dealing with minorities (often ostensibly based on Islamic authority) intersects with and informs modern constitutionalism and international law. The book identifies who exactly can be classed as a minority group, analysing in detail the different religious and ethnic minorities across the region. The book also pays special attention to the plight of minorities who are spread between various states, often as the result of conflict. It assesses the applicable domestic legislative instruments within the three countries investigated as case studies: Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, and highlights key domestic remedies that could serve as models for ensuring greater social cohesion and greater inclusion of minorities in the political life of these countries.

Investigating minority and indigenous women’s rights in Muslim-majority states, this book critically examines the human rights regime within international law. Based on extensive and diverse ethnographic research on Amazigh women in Morocco, the book unpacks and challenges generally accepted notions of rights and equality. Significantly, and controversially, the book challenges the supposedly ‘emancipatory’ power vested in the human rights project; arguing that rights-based discourses are sites of contestation for different groups that use them to assert their agency in society. More specifically, it shows how the very conditions that make minority and indigenous women instrumental to the preservation of their culture may condemn them to a position of subalternity. In response, and engaging the notion and meaning of Islamic feminism, the book proposes that feminism should be interpreted and contextualised locally in order to be effective and inclusive, and so in order for the human rights project to fully realise its potential to empower the marginalised and make space for their voices to be heard. Providing a detailed, empirically based, analysis of rights in action, this book will be of relevance to scholars, students and practitioners in human rights policy and practice, in international law, minorities’ and indigenous peoples’ rights, gender studies, and Middle Eastern and North African Studies.

"The present guide offers information related to norms and mechanisms developed to protect the rights of persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. It includes detailed information about procedures and forums in which minority issues may be raised to minorities and by also covering selected specialized agencies and regional mechanisms, the present Guide complements information contained in Working with the United Nations Human Rights Programme: A Handbook for Civil Society"--Introduction.