The Minority Concepts And Definition Of Your Problem

The minority concepts and definition of your problem

Introduction

Minority protection has always been a recurring issue related to international law. Theme that takes special importance in these times due to the large number of cases that have occurred throughout the twentieth century and the 21st century. Despite being a recurring issue, there is no unit approach for its solution and is openly discussed by international society that seeks to provide these minorities with legal means of protection. It is true that there is a protection system in which a large number of states such as human rights, which are based on recognizing the freedom and equality of all people related to dignity and inherent rights come together. But, it is also known that there are many cases of violation of these precepts through persecution for the reasons of breed or religious, political, ethnic origin … cases on which neither the perpetrators’ own states of the actions nor other states nor international organizations nor international organizationsThey perform any type of movement to stop or relativize the damages that are suffered by people.

In relation to minorities, this work seeks to examine in a thorough way the aspects that doctrine considers to elaborate a definition of the minority concept. We must take into account that there are currently a high number of minority groups within the international space and this leads to the fact that reflections can be derived contrary to certain rights that are inherent to the person.

These reflections can lead to certain societies to evolve in models that lead to active discrimination over these social groups and unfortunately many of these cases occur due to policies implemented by governments. Throughout the work, different real cases will be discussed in which you can see different international crimes committed on minorities from the most brutal such as genocide, to more "convoluted" models such as the crime of incitement to genocide. In addition, despite the fact that a specific mention is not made, there are a lot of crimes that are committed in the most advanced societies on certain minority groups and that do not have the advertising and the impact of those we have mentioned above, such as the deprivation of the deprivation of thefull exercise of the same civil, economic, social, political and cultural rights as the rest of the members of society.

Minority

The minority concept mainly falls on two disciplines that are closely related in many aspects . These two disciplines are law and sociology . Both disciplines have the same common axis on which their theories develop. This axis is the result of the variable policies of the countries in relation to the way in which current legislation guides minorities, defines its limits and protects the characteristics of these.

There are currently various minorities depending on the State to which we refer despite this, minorities have a common denominator because they are always groups separated by linguistic, ethnic, religious or cultural reason. The creation of these groups is closely linked to the appearance of modern policies and sociological movements of the twentieth century despite the fact that since the first societies there have been minority groups within these .

We must highlight at this point both the absence of a legal definition for minorities and a political definition as a result of the inoperative importance they have received by society. As a result of the lack of definition, the distinction that can be made between minorities and collectivities is compromised, therefore, the differentiation of an express complexity between the two. In this sense and as Casals exposes "the complexity to elaborate a minority concept constitutes a serious conceptual stumbling block, greatly making it difficult to justify the assignment of collective rights to these groups …" .

Terminological imprecision about minorities.

As we have already stated, a definition of minorities is difficult to apply. We start from the idea that it is the State and the minority who specify the protection rules. Being vital the state’s ability to provide a person with the status as a citizen or on the linking of nationality. This is where we find the first terminological inaccuracy. Between nationality and citizenship. In common, both terms develop a quality acquired by people in relation to the State and the difference between these is that the nationality lies to the individual with the State and citizenship is relative to the ownership and exercise of rights .

Although it seems to be simple the differentiation between both concepts there is a great problem if we extrapolate both terms on those issues related to minorities and their protection on the international level.

This problem that we have presented above comes from the definition of these terms by different legal traditions. There is a clear difference between the French conception and the German-Eslava conception. So when we bring both terms to the international level, a clear inacision for several countries is created. When referring to nationality as a state organization and citizenship as the head of rights we are accepting the French conception. If on the contrary we adopt nationality as the ownership of rights and citizenship as a state organization we would then develop the German-Eslava conception .

The solution could be much simpler than it may apparently seem and is based on recognizing that a national minority is nothing more than a cultural group. At present, both conceptions are incorporated in international texts on human rights so that this problem with the interpretation does not arise.

Definition based on international regulation.

As we have already seen throughout the work to be able to define minorities, it has great complexity. For this, throughout this point, international regulation will be used to create a definition of minorities.

However, we must be clear that in this international sphere states do not correctly carry out their work to protect and define minorities. This can be verified that there are many situations in which the rules that these states refer only to one or more minorities of those found in their territory. This occurs mostly in those bilateral protection agreements promoted by states, which do not define the notion of minority, but also apply protection to those that are identified. Also, we must take into account the existence of norms that do not make any specific reference about a minority. This occurs in multilateral protection agreements. The problem of these agreements is similar to those that we have exposed at first and that is that the states after the approval of these agreements limit the scope by applying to the minorities on which they want the agreement to be applied.

In order to better clarify the definition of minorities we must raise various elements that help us and which can provide a more legal vision of this phenomenon.

The first of the elements arises from something as basic in the states of law as is the democratic context. It should be taken into account that the minority definition cannot be done more than in a democratic context, since it is only in democracy where human rights are respected. On this element we must add that it is especially in Europe where through multilateral and bilateral agreements, which we have already explained above, most minority protection standards have been carried out . With the exception of article 27 of the PIDCP and declaration A/res/47/135 . In non -democratic contexts there are other problems that have greater importance such as respect for human rights or social development.

The second of the elements that we must take into account is that international protection standards do not refer to all existing minorities in the states but that in a subjective way it is directed to certain minorities. These minorities chosen for protection are selected by the states themselves, so that we can affirm that only a certain population is legislated.

conclusion

With all the above we can define that minorities are “the groups numerically lower than the rest of the population of the state, in a non -dominant situation, whose members have their own cultural characteristics, different from those of the majority in the state and that they want to conserve,and that are generally in a situation of having a state-affin and/or being in a particularly vulnerable situation." .