Self-Determination and Minority Rights

1969 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon Van Dyke
Keyword(s):  
Minority Rights ◽  
Self Determination

I. The Northern Ireland Peace Agreement, Minority Rights and Self-Determination

1998 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Warbrick ◽  
Dominic McGoldrick ◽  
Geoff Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Right

The Northern Ireland Peace Agreement1 was concluded following multi-party negotiations on Good Friday, 10 April 1998. It received 71 per cent approval in Northern Ireland and 95 per cent approval in the Republic of Ireland in the subsequent referenda held on Friday 22 May, the day after Ascension. To some, it must have seemed that the timing was singularly appropriate following 30 years of “The Troubles”, which were perceived as being between a “Catholic minority” and a “Protestant majority”. While there are some minority groups identified by their religious affiliation that do require rights relating only to their religion, such as the right to worship in community,2 to practise and profess their religion,3 to legal recognition as a church,4 to hold property5 and to determine its own membership,6 some minority groups identified by their religious affiliation are properly national or ethnic minorities–religion is merely one factor which distinguishes them from the other groups, including the majority, in the population. One example of the latter situation is to be seen in (Northern) Ireland where there is, in fact, untypically, a double minority: the Catholic-nationalist community is a minority in Northern Ireland, but the Protestant-unionist population is a minority in the island of Ireland as a whole.7 The territory of Northern Ireland is geographically separate from the rest of the United Kingdom. The recent peace agreement addresses a whole range of issues for Northern Ireland, but included are, on the one hand, rights for the populations based on their religious affiliation, their culture and their language and, on the other, rights with respect to their political participation up to the point of external self-determination. It is a holistic approach. Like any good minority rights agreement,8 it deals with both standards and their implementation and, like any good minority rights agreement, it is not a minority rights agreement but, rather, a peace settlement.

The Uncomfortable Balance between a Minority and a People: The Global/Local Disconnect

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-272
Author(s):  
Parvathi Menon
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Personal Characteristic ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Minority Protection ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Minority Identity ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

The legitimacy of secessionist movements has emerged as an important debate, while the protection of minorities within a democracy has become merely of peripheral interest to international law. My project suggests that the advent of universalized (minority) rights re-conceptualized the majority-minority relationship and its balance, reducing the possibilities of political processes to balance the relationship. What was construed as a redress for dichotomous relationships between the oppressor and the oppressed through (the right to) self-determination, became a discourse between minority (identity) rights and a democratic entitlement, post-colonially. These norms universalized a demand to rethink minority protection, no longer from the perspective of advantaged and disadvantaged; rather, to introduce perspectives of individuals polarized around a personal characteristic in their identity thus establishing/reinforcing the inferiority of their identity within the hierarchy.

Self-determination and Autonomy: Between Secession and Internal Self-determination

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 302-335
Author(s):  
Peter Hilpold
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
The Many

The 20th century can be qualified as the century of self-determination. Both politically as legally, the concept of self-determination formed the most important justification for quests for territorial changes. In the present contribution, the many meanings of self-determination and its relationship with the concept of autonomy and with minority rights shall be examined. It shall be shown that although no right to secession outside the colonial context can be discerned the claims for secession to be heard in several parts of Europe are nonetheless of considerable relevance for international law. And contrary to what is mostly held to allow such claims to be expressed may eventually even strengthen state sovereignty.

scholarly journals Deliberative Democracy in Multicultural Societies: The Challenges of Effectiveness, Legitimacy, and Equality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Barros Soares ◽  
Catarina Chaves Costa ◽  
Andréa Braga de Araújo
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Meaningful Participation ◽  
Cultural Minorities

Multicultural societies are marked by the coexistence of ethnic, sexual, religious, racial, and cultural minorities and mainstream groups. This coexistence can either be tense or collaborative. How to bridge the gap between the political demands of majority and minority groups? What are the obstacles to meaningful participation? What are the main challenges faced by such societies? And finally, how do we encourage large-scale debates around issues of minorities? In order to provide answers to these questions, this review examines Intercultural Deliberation and the Politics of Minority Rights by R. E. Lowe-Walker (2018), Deliberative Democracy Now: LGBT Equality and the Emergence of Large-Scale Deliberative Systems by Edwina Barvosa (2018), and Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, and Self-determination in Multicultural Societies by Jorge M. Valadez (2018).  

scholarly journals On the Collateral Impact of Turkey’s Authoritarian Turn: Re-securitization of the Kurdish Issue and the Kurds’ Struggle for Minority Recognition and Self-Determination

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-104
Author(s):  
Emre Turkut
Keyword(s):  
Peace Process ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Turkish Government ◽  
Kurdish Question ◽  
Kurdish Issue ◽  
Political Imprisonment

Since the collapse of the peace process in 2015, the Turkish Government has sought to turn every move towards Kurdish rights into an existential threat – a process led to the re-securitization of the Kurdish question. Ever since the descent of Turkey into an authoritarian polity has begun in the aftermath of the June 2015 elections, the Kurdish minority has suffered a brutal crackdown marked by high of political imprisonment and greater restrictions on freedom of assembly and association and on electoral aspects of self-determination. This commentary will take a closer look at the dire consequences of the collateral impact of Turkey’s authoritarian turn on the Kurdish political movement from the perspectives of minority rights and self-determination.

Pluralism, Tolerance and Control: On the Millet System and the Question of Minorities

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-65
Author(s):  
Ergun Cakal
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Plural Identity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Divide And Rule ◽  
And Control ◽  
Social Reconfigurations

Abstract State accommodation of plural identity has remained very much subject to the contestations of a majority/minority paradigm, through which autonomy and tolerance are still negotiated and filtered. These social reconfigurations, including those oriented towards internal self-determination and minority rights regimes, reveal glimpses of a dark neo-colonial underbelly to state rule. A comparison between the Ottoman millet system and the Israeli control system illustrates that imperial modes of ‘divide and rule’, or ‘segmented pluralism’, continue to operate, and are sometimes even enhanced, through the deployment of minority rights. Using a selective Marxist reading, this paper will initially explore the parallels between imperial and modern state rule in the face of pluralism before discussing the methods used for hegemony-maintenance, including: segmentation; dependence; and cooptation. Finally, a socio-legal discussion on the ways in which the forces of hegemony are heavily guised and sustained will follow.

The Partition Solution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Robson
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
State System ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Palestinian Arab ◽  
Imperial State

This chapter looks at the emergence of proposals to partition Palestine into a separate Arab and Jewish states. It argues that partition, far from representing a last-ditch effort to solve the problems of Arab-Zionist conflict in Palestine, actually reflected central principles of the imperial state system the mandate governments and the League had long been building across the Middle East. In particular, this chapter examines how the League and the British began to present partition as a mode of protecting minority rights and the principle of national self-determination – the same rationales used to promote the idea of transfer – and traces Zionist, Palestinian Arab, and regional Arab responses to proposals of partition.

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