Promoting And Protecting Minority Rights
Promoting and ProtectingMinority RightsA Guide for AdvocatesDesigned and printed at United Nations, Geneva1340538 (E) – November 2014 – 3,452 – HR/PUB/12/7United Nations publicationsSales No. E.13.XIV.1ISBN 978-92-1-154197-7
Promoting and ProtectingMinority RightsA Guide for AdvocatesGeneva and New York, 2012
iiPROMOTING AND PROTECTING MINORITY RIGHTSNoteThe designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not implythe expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nationsconcerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerningthe delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.***Symbols of United Nations documents are composed of capital letters combined with figures.Mention of such a figure indicates a reference to a United Nations document.HR/PUB/12/7Sales No. E.13.XIV.1ISBN 978-92-1-154197-7eISBN 978-92-1-056280-5 2012 United NationsAll worldwide rights reserved
Minority rights focus in the United NationsiiiForewordI am delighted that this publication, Promoting and Protecting Minority Rights: A Guide forMinority Rights Advocates, comes before you as we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of theadoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religiousand Linguistic Minorities.This anniversary gives us the opportunity to look back on the 20 years of promoting the Declarationand use that experience to plan and strategize for the future, to decide how best to bring thisDeclaration further to the fore of human rights discussions taking place all over the world anddiscuss its implementation. It is our hope that the Guide will be a true vade mecum, assisting civilsociety to engage even more effectively in this important and immense task.Whether we are talking about democracy-building following the uprisings in North Africa andthe Middle East or ensuring human rights in the context of the global economic downturn; aboutsustainable development in the context of the 2012 United Nations Conference on SustainableDevelopment (“Rio 20”) or about guaranteeing effective participation of minorities, includingminority women and girls, in all spheres of life, worldwide; minority issues need to maintain theirrightful place on the agendas of decision makers.In this anniversary year, my Office is increasing its engagement on minority rights even further. Weare organizing a series of subregional and regional events to address most topical minority issuesand we pursue a range of awareness-raising activities. We are taking the lead in the formationand coordination of the United Nations Network on Racial Discrimination and Protection ofMinorities, a new platform aiming to enhance cooperation and dialogue on minorities acrossthe United Nations system. All this is in addition to already established work on minority rights,which includes field-presence engagement on minority issues, capacity-building for minorityrights activists through the Minorities Fellowship Programme, supporting the mandate of theIndependent Expert on minority issues and the annual Forum on Minority Issues. Please visit ourwebsite to make sure you have all the latest information on these activities.It is our role as human rights defenders to ensure that the rights of national or ethnic, religiousand linguistic minorities are highlighted and taken into account. We hope that this Guide willprove to be a valuable tool for minority rights advocates, helping them place minority rights onthe agenda, where this has not yet been done, or make sure they stay there and are adequatelyaddressed.In the international, regional and national discussions framed by the “all human rights for all”principle, we must work together to make sure that minorities are not left out. Towards this end,the Guide explains, in a reader-friendly way, who are the main actors working on minorityissues in the United Nations and in key regional organizations, and what are the best ways ofengaging them.Minorities enrich the societies of each and every country in the world. Through working onguaranteeing their rights, our chief aims must be that no one will be afraid to self-identify asa member of a minority, fearing disadvantage will come out of that decision; that personsbelonging to minorities will be guaranteed protection of their existence and identity; and thatthey will benefit from the principles of effective participation and non-discrimination. Let thispublication guide us in working towards making this a reality for all persons belonging tominorities, everywhere.Navi PillayUnited Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
AcknowledgementsThe Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights wishes to express itssincere thanks to Hurst Hannum, Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law andDiplomacy, for his valuable contribution to the preparation of this Guide. In addition, specialmention and thanks are due to our United Nations partners and regional organizations that havecontributed to the publication.
Minority rights focus in the United NationsvContentsPageForeword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iiiIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1PART ONE – MINORITY RIGHTS FOCUS IN THE UNITED NATIONSChaptersI.Overview: development of minority rights in international law . . . . . . . . . . . . .2II.The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. . . . . . .8III.The United Nations Human Rights Council and its subsidiary bodies. . . . . . . . .21IV.The United Nations special procedures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30V.Human rights treaty bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44PART TWO – OTHER RELEVANT BODIES IN THE UNITED NATIONS SYSTEMVI.The United Nations Development Programme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64VII.The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67VIII. The United Nations Children’s Fund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72IX.The International Labour Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76X.The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. . . . . . . .80PART THREE – REGIONAL SYSTEMSXI.The human rights system of the African Union. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90XII.The Council of Europe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102XIII. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123XIV. The European Union. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133XV.143The inter-American human rights system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .AnnexesI.II.Core documentsDeclaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic,Religious and Linguistic Minorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151Commentary to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of PersonsBelonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities ofthe Working Group on Minorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154Useful websites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
Minority rights focus in the United Nations1INTRODUCTIONToday, issues related to the rights of persons belonging to minorities may be found in nearlyevery human rights instrument and forum. The United Nations and other intergovernmentalorganizations recognize that minority rights are essential to protect those who wish to preserveand develop values and practices which they share with other members of their community. Theyalso recognize that members of minorities make significant contributions to the richness anddiversity of society, and that States which take appropriate measures to recognize and promoteminority rights are more likely to remain tolerant and stable.The present Guide offers information related to norms and mechanisms developed to protectthe rights of persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. It includesdetailed information about procedures and forums in which minority issues may be raised withinthe United Nations system and in regional systems. By focusing on the work related to minoritiesand by also covering selected specialized agencies and regional mechanisms, the presentGuide complements information contained in Working with the United Nations Human RightsProgramme: A Handbook for Civil Society (OHCHR, 2008), which provides practical guidanceon the United Nations human rights mechanisms in general.1 The information contained in theGuide is accurate as of 1 January 2012.It is hoped that this Guide will be useful in assisting minority advocates to make full and effectiveuse of existing international mechanisms and, ultimately, to promote and protect the rightsguaranteed under international instruments.1Available from ok.aspx (accessed 29 November2012). The Handbook is available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish; online, it is alsoavailable in Farsi, Georgian and Nepali. An associated DVD was produced in 2011.1
2PROMOTING AND PROTECTING MINORITY RIGHTSPART ONEMINORITY RIGHTS FOCUS IN THE UNITED NATIONSCHAPTER IOVERVIEW:DEVELOPMENT OF MINORITY RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAWSummary: The first significant attempt to identify internationally recognized minority rights wasthrough a number of “minority treaties” adopted under the auspices of the League of Nations.With the creation of the United Nations, attention initially shifted to universal human rightsand decolonization. However, the United Nations has gradually developed a number of norms,procedures and mechanisms concerned with minority issues, and the 1992 United NationsDeclaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and LinguisticMinorities is the fundamental instrument that guides the activities of the United Nations in thisfield today.The concepts of “minority” and “majority” are relatively recent in international law, althoughdistinctions among communities have obviously existed throughout history. Some political systemsdid grant special community rights to their minorities, although this was not generally based onany recognition of minority “rights” per se. The millet system of the Ottoman Empire, for example,allowed a degree of cultural and religious autonomy to non-Muslim religious communities, suchas Orthodox Christians, Armenians, Jews and others. The French and American revolutionsin the late eighteenth century proclaimed the free exercise of religion as a fundamental right,although neither directly addressed the broader issue of minority protection. The 1815 Congressof Vienna, which dismantled the Napoleonic Empire, recognized minority rights to some extent,as did the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, which recognized special rights for the religious community ofMount Athos.Most international legal-political concerns during the nineteenth century, however, weredirected towards justifying the unification of linguistic “nations” based on the principle of selfdetermination, rather than the protection of minority groups as such. As the lure of nationalismgrew, people who did not share the ethnic, linguistic or religious identity of the majority withintheir country were increasingly under threat. The consolidation of States along linguistic lines,expansion of trade and increasing need for literate populations who could work successfully inthe context of the industrial revolution placed pressures on smaller or less powerful communitiesto conform to dominant linguistic and cultural norms. By the time of the outbreak of the FirstWorld War in 1914, national or minority concerns were at the forefront of international politics,at least in Europe.The League of NationsFollowing the end of the First World War, minority issues became a central concern for theLeague of Nations. A series of so-called minority treaties was adopted to protect certain specifiedgroups, addressing many of their key concerns.
Minority rights focus in the United Nations3Among the protections commonly included were the rights to equality and non-discrimination; theright to citizenship if a person commonly resident in a new State (or a State with new borders)so wished; the right to use one’s own language in public and private; the right of minoritiesto establish their own religious, cultural, charitable and educational institutions; an obligationon the State to provide an “equitable” level of financial support to minority schools, in whichinstruction at the primary level would be in the minority’s mother tongue; and entrenchment oflaws protecting minorities so that they could not be changed by subsequent statutes.Although the supervisory system established by the League was political rather than legal anddid not permit aggrieved minorities to engage States on an equal or adversarial footing, itdid provide certain oversight through the League’s Secretariat. Almost any person or groupcould bring a situation to the attention of the League and the Secretariat could also investigatesituations on its own initiative. The ultimate sanction was public discussion in the League Counciland, potentially, the adoption of a resolution calling upon a State to take particular action. Sometreaties, such as that which created the Free City of Danzig, provided for access to the PermanentCourt of International Justice (the predecessor of today’s International Court of Justice), and theCourt delivered a number of important advisory opinions on minority issues.2Although the scope of minority treaties was limited – they applied only to a small numberof defeated or new States and there was no agreement that minority rights were universallyapplicable – their significance should not be underestimated. They had concrete implicationsfor minorities within the State, and they constituted an important step in the development ofinternational minority rights and human rights law. In particular, the acceptance of the principleof international interest in and supervision of the fate of minorities within States was a majorbreakthrough in the development of international law, which in some ways presaged the laterpromotion of broader human rights by the United Nations.The United NationsThe Charter of the United Nations makes no mention of minority rights per se, but it doesinclude several provisions on human rights, including Article 1 (3), which identifies as one of thepurposes of the United Nations the achievement of international cooperation “in promoting andencouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction asto race, sex, language, or religion”.In 1948, the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whicharticulated the content of human rights in much greater detail and remains one of the mostimportant international human rights documents: its anti-discrimination provisions and otherarticles are of central importance also for persons belonging to minorities. While the GeneralAssembly was unable to agree on any formulation in the Declaration concerning minority rightsper se, it did note that the United Nations “cannot remain indifferent to the fate of minorities”. Itadded, in the same resolution that proclaimed the Universal Declaration, that it was “difficult toadopt a uniform solution for this complex and delicate question [of minorities], which has specialaspects in each State in which it arises.”32See, in particular, Permanent Court of International Justice, Rights of Minorities in Upper Silesia (MinoritySchools), Germany v. Poland, Judgment No. 12, 26 April 1928; Questions Relating to Settlers of GermanOrigin in Poland, Advisory Opinion, Series B No. 6, 10 September 1923; The Greco-Bulgarian “Communities”,Advisory Opinion, Series B No. 17, 31 July 1930; Access to German Minority Schools in Upper Silesia,Advisory Opinion, Series A./B. No. 40, 15 May 1931; Minority Schools in Albania, Advisory Opinion, SeriesA./B. No. 62, 6 April 1935.3Resolution 217 C(III).
4PROMOTING AND PROTECTING MINORITY RIGHTSWhile many argued that issues related to minorities would be best addressed through acombination of respect for individual human rights and the growing attention being paid tothe right of colonial territories to self-determination, the United Nations did address minorityissues in a number of specific cases. For example, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention andPunishment of the Crime of Genocide prohibits the destruction of “a national, ethnical, racialor religious group, as such”. In 1947, the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination andProtection of Minorities was created as a sub-body of the Commission on Human Rights and aninfluential study on that issue prepared for the Sub-Commission by Special Rapporteur FrancescoCapotorti was published in 1979.4 In the 1960s, three important treaties were adopted thatalso addressed minority rights. In 1960, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization (UNESCO) adopted the Convention against Discrimination in Education, whichrecognized the right of minority group members to carry out their own educational activities,including establishing their own schools and teaching their own language. In 1965, theUnited Nations adopted the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of RacialDiscrimination, which prohibits any distinction “based on race, colour, descent, or nationalor ethnic origin”. In 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights includedin article 27 a specific provision concerned with minorities, a principal legal tool to advanceminority rights. The Convention and the Covenant are discussed more fully in chapter V.While these developments were important, advancing the protection of minority rights receivedmore attention as the cold war ended. The importance of minority rights and their contributionto the stability of States was increasingly recognized in the work of international institutions,including in Central and Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union.In Europe, an important breakthrough came in 1990, when a review meeting of the Conferenceon Security and Co-operation in Europe (now the Organization for Security and Co-operationin Europe (OSCE), see chap. XIII) adopted a declaration on human rights, democracy, therule of law and minority rights. This so-called Copenhagen Document commits the (now) 56participating States of OSCE to a wide range of minority rights. Although the CopenhagenDocument is a political declaration, its impact has been significant and it helped to pave the wayfor the legally binding Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, adoptedby the Council of Europe in 1994. These and other initiatives of the Council of Europe and OSCEare discussed in chapters XII and XIII respectively.At the United Nations, a declaration on minority rights was under discussion for over a decadebefore the General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging toNational or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (Minorities Declaration) in 1992 (seeannex I). The Minorities Declaration contains progressive language, including as regards minorityparticipation in the political and economic life of the State. In addition, the preamble recognizesthat protecting minority rights will “contribute to the political and social stability of States inwhich they live” and, in turn, “contribute to the strengthening of friendship and cooperationamong
minority women and girls, in all spheres of life, worldwide; minority issues need to maintain their rightful place on the agendas of decision makers. In this anniversary year, my Office is increasing its engagement on minority rights even further. We are organizing a series of subregional and regional events to address most topical minority issues
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