Material for specialized media EURASIA-Net project - EURAC

I.3 What are minority rights and why are they needed?
When addressing minorities and their rights often reference is made to a “two pillars
system” of protection. One pillar refers to non-discrimination and the second one to
minority specific rights including also group rights. This picture of two pillars makes
evident that members of minority groups have to protected both as regards as their
position as individual human beings as well as regards their collective identity as a
group. In reality these two dimensions might not be as separate as the model of “pillars”
makes as believe since members of a minority group take their individual minority
identity (language, culture, ethnicity) from the very existence of a group identity and,
at the same time, a distinct minority identity is dependent on a sufficient number of
individuals identifying with that very collective identity. In that sense the collective
identity of a minority group and the individual position of the members of that minority
build two sides of the same undeniable coin – the existence of minorities and their
resulting needs.
Legally speaking the pillar of non-discrimination focuses on the prohibition of being
discriminated on the basis of prominent grounds of discrimination such as language,
ethnicity, culture or religion. It is only obvious that this branch of protection “forms
an integral part of the international protection of human rights” as is said clearly in
Article 1 of the Framework Protection for the Protection of National Minorities (see
in detail under point III.4). In this perspective minority rights are less “special” than
one might think. Rather than establishing special legal regimes, they seem to foster
political systems to provide that general human rights are de facto guaranteed to
those who most urgently need them, namely marginalized groups. The means applied
to arrive at that situation are for instance mechanisms of mainstreaming which oblige
legislators, public authorities and Courts to guarantee that minority interests are
properly taking into account when drafting laws, implementing legal norms or
providing justice in legal proceedings. Such an approach can help to counterbalance
the very fact that minorities are in general in a disadvantaged position and less
represented in those (professional) groups dominating the making and the application
of the law. Moreover giving special emphasis to minorities also counterbalances the
fact that minorities are facing negative stereotypes within society. How far this
special emphasis goes in a specific political system will depend on the specific
understanding of equality applied.
Equality can be looked at from a formal or from a substantive perspective. A formal
reading of equality just requires to treat everybody in the identical way. To provide all
citizens with school education (exclusively) in the official language of state means to
treat everybody equally. However, such a formal reading of equality leads to a situation
where some people (normally the majority) is provided primary education in their
mother tongue whereas other people (normally the minorities) have to attend schools in
a language other than their mother tongue. Already the Greek philosopher Aristotle
established that the principle of equality not only envisages to treat equal situations
equally but also to treat different situations differently. A substantive reading of
equality therefore wants to establish equality of opportunity, if not even equality of
results. And at this background it gets also clear why minority rights are addressed in
addition to the general human rights. Only if one takes the special disadvantages
minorities are facing into account, it will be possible not to deny the right enshrined in
8