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Minorities have a right to protection of their collective physical existence. The UN Declaration on the Rights of National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities indicates that States “shall protect the existence” of minorities “within their respective territories” (article 1.1).
This right is also safeguarded by the prohibition of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, “in whole or in part” is prohibited by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), whether it is carried out by killing members of the group or through other coercive measures devised to cause serious harm or physical destruction of the group (article 2). Although the Genocide Convention is not limited to protection of minorities, the dynamics of genocide are such that it is minorities that are most frequently targeted in this way. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court prohibits persecution against, inter alia, racial, national, ethnic, cultural or religious groups (article 7.1 (h)).
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Policy Responses on Protection of Existence of Minorities:
- Some States have imposed criminal penalties on those who practice discrimination or violate laws protecting minorities. In Brazil, for example, the 1988 Constitution criminalizes acts of racism with high penalties of imprisonment (See Law 7716 of 1989 and Law 9459 of 1997). In India, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 prescribes criminal responsibility for a wide variety of offences against Dalits and Adivasis.
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