In the 1990s inter-ethnic conflicts threaten the stability of many states. As a result the issue of minority rights has become an urgent concern for international lawyers. Minority and Group Rights in the New Millennium examines the way in which existing international law and human rights instruments protect the rights of minorities. In addition the essays in this volume address current debates on the fundamental issue of defining a minority, the complex arguments for expanding existing definitions and the legitimacy of claims by specific groups to qualify for minority status.

The role of education.

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.

"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.

The Concept of Group Rights in International Law offers a critical appraisal of the concept of group rights in international law on the basis of an extensive survey of existing group rights in contemporary international law. Among some of its findings is the observation that an ideological way of arguing about this legal category is widespread among scholars as well as practitioners; it sees this ideological framing as one of the main reasons why international law has so far been very reluctant to provide group rights and to call them by their name. Accordingly, the book re-evaluates the concept based on the experience with existing group rights in international law and pleads for a more pragmatic approach. Despite limitations with the concept, the overall thesis is that there is a role for group rights as a pragmatic tool allowing for a principled approach to substate groups through international law. Such an approach could turn group rights into an arguably minor, but nevertheless, highly relevant legal category of international law.

The democratic management of cultural diversity is the greatest political challenge for present-day European societies. The plural character of our societies forces us to rethink the basic political concepts, starting off from a new idea of inclusive and plural d¬emocracy. The application of human rights must be reconsidered in the light of presentday reality so that democratic states are able to guarantee the benefi t of these rights to all persons through their identity and not in spite of it, thus creating political spaces that are open to a multi-identity coexistence.

We live in a world that not only sets standards for, but also professes its commitment to promoting and protecting ‘rights’. Since ours is an age of heightened public interest in auditing the actual realisation of such standards and commitment, the first major focus of this book is a critical account of international standards aimed at the protection of minorities. To that end, it concentrates on four key dimensions. Firstly, it addresses the issue of the identification of minorities as understood by international law. Secondly, it outlines a brief history on the development of international law towards improving the protection of minorities. Thirdly, it gives an overview of international instruments and mechanisms on minorities. Finally, it analyses the rights of minorities under international standards. All these dimensions point to the fact that international minority rights lag behind the development of other branches of rights. The second major focus of this book is to relate international standards on minority protection to South Asian regimes. Concentrating on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Afghanistan, an endeavor is made to examine the state of minorities and their protection under the domestic regimes. It emerges that the normative commitments of these states are more or less compatible with international standards. Nevertheless, majority-minority syndrome persistently remains as one of the causes behind multidimensional deprivation and victimization of South Asian minorities. The present book also assesses the extent to which regional cooperation in South Asia has so far contributed to extending protection to minorities. This ends with an argument that SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) has the potential to play a far greater role in this regard.