Chronicle Essay
Measuring Civilization
By Mark Lattimer
Gandhi famously remarked that the way in which we treat minorities is the measure of civilization in a society. In differing ways, we have all failed Gandhi’s test. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities; yet, for all its fine words, the last decade has been marked by ethnic killings in every continent. Minorities have been the deliberate targets of campaigns of slaughter.
The events of September 11 have highlighted the global security threat posed by fragmented States and at the same time have led to the danger of renewed religious intolerance and the repression of Muslim minorities. But despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the position of minorities is now indelibly associated with conflict in the world, many politicians or policy makers are still reluctant to draw the necessary connection between minority rights and conflict prevention.
To understand this link, we need to go behind the immediate causes of war and look at the conditions that make war possible, just as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has done with the other great human scourge - famine. Sen showed that the best insurance against famine was a democratic political system, with politicians reliant on popular support and monitored by a free press. For example, in contrast to the great famine in Bengal, India in 1943, which occurred during an economic boom, there has never been a major famine in that country since its independence in 1947. And just as the support and encouragement of democracy is a keystone in the fight against famine, so too does minority rights constitute a vital but often overlooked tool in the elusive search for peace.
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| The first annual session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was held in New York this May. Established by the UN Economic and Social Council, the Forum - the first United Nations body consisting of both indigenous and governmental experts - has a mandate to advise on and discuss indigenous issues relating to economic and social development, culture, environment and education, among other subjects. |
Most modern wars take the form of internal conflicts and are fought not on battlefields but across the lands and homes of the civilian population. Securing the support of the local population, often by coercion, becomes a key aim of the parties to the conflict, whether they are State security forces or armed opposition groups. In this situation, members of minority communities are the first to have their loyalty called into question by the State or politicians from the majority community. Minority leaders seeking peaceful solutions are placed in an impossible situation as State security measures tighten, violations of minority rights rise, and a growing climate of fear makes community members see armed opposition as a possible option. This is exactly what happened in Kosovo in 1997-1998, as the ferocity of the escalating repression led to the widespread disillusionment of ethnic Albanians with the pacifist approach of their political leadership and a dramatic surge in support for the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The recognition and protection of their rights, on the other hand, creates an all-important feeling of security for the minority community, which gives them the incentive to sue for peace or, in the ideal scenario, removes the conditions for conflict in the first place. Recognition of the language rights of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia has combined with security guarantees to lead to a swift de-escalation of the conflict there. Whether this will hold depends on the bond of trust being maintained and strengthened between the communities, which in turn relies on mutual respect for each other’s rights.
Unfortunately, however, fear of separatism leads some States to regard minority rights as a threat rather than as a practical framework to help resolve communal tensions or autonomy claims. Secretary-General Kofi Annan confronted this issue directly in a speech he made when he visited Indonesia in 2000. Pointing out that the breaking-up of large States into smaller ones is often a “wasteful and unimaginative” way of resolving political differences, he argued, “but those who oppose separatism have got to show that their solution is less wasteful and more imaginative. Minorities have to be convinced that the State really belongs to them, as well as to the majority, and that both will be the losers if it breaks up. Conflict is almost certain to result if the State’s response to separatism causes widespread suffering in the region or among the ethnic group concerned. The effect then is to make more people feel that the State is not their State, and so provide separatism with new recruits.”
It is clearly not easy, however, to carry this level of insight into State practice or maintain it in the face of prejudice or perceived threats to security. It was, ironically, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that first proposed a UN Declaration on the rights of minorities back in the late 1970s, and prepared a first draft, before a new generation of politicians with an ethno-nationalist agenda led to the break up of the State and the terrible transformation of many of its towns and cities into bywords for ethnic violence and intolerance.
But while the violation of minority rights may continue to be a depressing reality around the world, one achievement of the international human rights movement has been the creation of a consensus that the manner in which a State treats its citizens is no longer purely an internal matter. States are sovereign, but sovereignty is now understood as conferring a right to govern, not a right to abuse.
The Secretary-General’s road map towards implementation of the UN Millennium Declaration makes clear that this holds a lesson for all States, including democracies, “An election alone is not a solution; small minorities are often at risk in democracies, and a well-functioning democracy is one that operates within the context of a comprehensive human rights regime.” The road map thus stresses the need to “pay special attention to the rights of minorities, indigenous peoples and those most vulnerable in society”.
The concept of the symbol of the United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage is based on the very figures of the year 2002 which, through a specular composition, convey the fundamental idea of “culture, mirror of humanity” expressed via a calligraphic and manual approach. Granting an impact as a symbol to the year 2002 implies singling out this period and taking advantage of its ephemeral character so as to give it a major role.
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In this task, there is perhaps no better place to start than the UN Declaration, which combines a clear statement of the rights held by ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities with reassurance for States on sovereignty. Not intended primarily as an aid to conflict prevention, that might be nonetheless where the greatest impact of implementing the Declaration lies. The rights of minorities to use their own language, practise their own culture and religion, and participate effectively in decisions that affect their lives or the regions where they live - all enshrined in the Declaration - carry the promise, if taken seriously, of removing many of the conditions of conflict.
Some significant progress has already been made. The dogged and constructive efforts of the UN Working Group on Minorities in promoting the implementation of the Declaration have earned the respect of both States and minority and indigenous communities.
The Working Group, established in 1995, has succeeded in advancing the understanding by UN institutions and Member States of such thorny issues as approaches to managing regional autonomy. But as a small group of experts making recommendations to the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights, the Working Group’s practical influence is naturally constrained. This has led Minority Rights Group International and the Working Group itself to call for the appointment of a Special Representative on minorities. Crucially, the Special Representative should have the mandate to investigate individual situations where minorities are in danger or have suffered grave violations of their rights. But strengthening the UN human rights mechanisms in Geneva is less than half the story. While minorities feature all too often in UN reports about human rights violations, one would still be hard pressed to find a reference, at least until very recently, to minority rights in UN plans on conflict prevention or peacekeeping.
In the Secretary-General’s report on the prevention of armed conflict to the General Assembly last year, he admitted that many parts of the UN system have preventive potential, but that it was “disparate and inchoate”. This is not to say that the lessons of the 1990s have all gone unlearnt. The success of recent UN-sponsored initiatives, such as the Bonn negotiations for a broad-based government in Afghanistan, has partly relied on a new sensitivity to the dynamics of inter-group politics. Senior UN officials in New York, such as Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Danilo Türk, have both extensive human rights experience and a keen awareness of the mechanics of cooperation between minority and majority communities.
The strengthening of early warning mechanisms is also very welcome, but there is a clear need for a thorough cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques between UN institutions in Geneva and New York, covering the full range of preventive action, including minority rights promotion, monitoring, fact-finding, early warning, technical assistance and good-offices diplomacy.
The events of the decade since the UN Declaration on Minorities was first signed have served to underscore its vital relevance today. The imperative that guided the Declaration was, in the words of its first article, that “States should protect the existence and the ... identity of minorities”. We have now learned that in implementing the Declaration they may also be protecting themselves from the threat of war.
Links:
Minority Rights Group International
United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
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Mark Lattimer is the Director of Minority Rights Group International, a non-governmental organization which works worldwide to protect the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples and promote cooperation between communities. Formerly with Amnesty International, he is currently working on a book on the future of international criminal law.
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