Minority Rights in National and International Law
The first minority rights were proclamed and enacted by the revolutionary Parliament of Hungary in July 1849. Minority rights were codified in Austrian law in 1867. Minority rights, as applying to ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples, are an integral part of international human rights law. Like children's rights, women's rights and refugee rights, minority rights are a legal framework designed to ensure that a specific group which is in a vulnerable, disadvantaged or marginalised position in society, is able to achieve equality and is protected from persecution. The first post-war international treaty to protect minorities, designed to protect them from the greatest threat to their existence, was the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Subsequent human rights standards that codify minority rights include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 27), the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, two Council of Europe treaties (the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Copenhagen Document of 1990.
Minority rights cover protection of existence, protection from discrimination and persecution, protection and promotion of identity, and participation in political life. For the rights of LGBT people, The Yogyakarta Principles have been approved by the United Nations Human Rights Council and for the rights of persons with disabilities, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted by United Nations General Assembly.
To protect minority rights, many countries have specific laws and/or commissions or ombudsman institutions (for example the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for National and Ethnic Minorities Rights).
While initially, the United Nations treated indigenous peoples as a sub-category of minorities, there is an expanding body of international law specifically devoted to them, in particular Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (adopted 14 September 2007).
Attempts to codify the rights of sexual minorities in international human rights law have met with strong opposition from a number of member states of the United Nations.
Read more about this topic: Minority Rights
Famous quotes containing the words minority, rights, national and/or law:
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The Civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, be infringed.”
—James Madison (17511836)
“Five oclock tea is a phrase our rude forefathers, even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for all the ills that flesh is heir to, the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (18321898)
“Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman.”
—Susan B. Anthony (18201906)