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Human rights protection is primarily aimed at the individual. However, different groups of human beings, such as women and children, have been acknowledged (e.g. through international treaties) as having distinct rights, albeit derived from universal human rights. These group-specific rights are regarded as part of their human rights. The same is true for minorities.
Minority rights are human rights. Minority rights function to ensure that minorities can enjoy their human rights on the same basis as other people. These rights are part of the body of human rights standards that protect minorities, including article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the UN Declaration on the Rights of National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. Minority rights help protect minorities from harm and from discrimination. These rights help to protect and promote minorities’ cultures, religions and languages. Minority rights facilitate the equal participation of minorities in the public sphere and in decision-making that affects them. These elements – protection of existence, non-discrimination, protection of identity and participation – are the foundations of minority rights.
In international standards, minority rights are expressed in individual terms as the “rights of persons belonging to minorities”. In international human rights law, therefore, minority rights are not the rights of the groups per se but of the individual members of the group. To be effective, however, these rights often need to be exercised in community with others. Under international law, States have the obligation to respect, protect and fulfill human rights. This applies also to minority rights.
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The UN Independent Expert on minority issues expresses four broad concerns stemming from minority rights:
- 1. Protecting a minority’s existence, including through protection of their physical integrity and the prevention of genocide;
- 2. Protecting and promoting cultural and social identity, including the right of individuals to choose which ethnic, linguistic or religious groups they wish to be identified with, and the right of those groups to affirm and protect their collective identity and to reject forced assimilation;
- 3. Ensuring effective non-discrimination and equality, including ending structural or systemic
discrimination; and
- 4. Ensuring effective participation of members of minorities in public life, especially with regard to decisions that affect them.
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Minorities have the right:
- to exist
- to non-discrimination
- to protection of their identity
- to participate in public life and in decision-making that affects them
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