Exercising the Right of Self-Determination: Opportunities and Limitations of a New Treaty on Minority Rights

Last year, on the 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, the Special Rapporteur on Minority Rights, Fernand de Varennes, called for a new treaty to better recognize and protect the rights of minorities. This report is a written contribution made by Dr. Anwen Elias on behalf of the Coppieters Foundation and it considers the implications of a new legal framework to protect minority rights on the exercise of the right of self-determination. Throughout the report, we use the term ‘state-less nation’ to refer to a community of people that self identifies and recognizes itself as a group but does not identify with a state or a “kin state” nor have the legal capacity to act as one. Often, these nations without a state have culturally, historically or linguistically well-defined and differentiated features. In these communities, there are demands for recognition, self-government, devolution, autonomy or calls to have their own state – or at least for members of the nation to have the right to decide for themselves whether or not to remain part of the larger state (and if so, in what form).