Cultural and language rights of minorities and indigenous peoples

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article introduces the special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights on the cultural and linguistic rights of minorities and indigenous peoples. The right to cultural life is at the core of all human identities but indigenous peoples and minorities have particular rights to protect their collective identities, which are more easily eroded by dominant culture(s) or due to harmful practices such as involuntary assimilation. The conference brought together scholars and activists to examine such threats in practice and to discuss the role of law and social mobilisation by minorities and indigenous peoples in response. The impact of recent events such as Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter transnational mobilisation are discussed in this introduction to illustrate how these major contemporary events also relate to cultural rights. The article provides an overview of the inter-disciplinary articles included in the special issue, which focus on key illustrative case studies of threats to cultural and linguistic rights across regions. The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage is a focus in several of the articles, as is with the role of international human rights law in protecting cultural and linguistic rights.