Cultural Identity and Human Rights: Minority Claims, Ethnic Identity and Group Rights

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between cultural identity and human rights in the light of the dynamics of identity formation, based on the immediate external culture of any multicultural society. The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between culture, identity and rights, which broadens the parameter of the existing dimension of human rights, using secondary sources to review the literature. It argues that these dynamics are marked by a number of factors and components featuring the group, community and individual rights. This prepares grounds for a wider, inclusionary and horizontal understanding of the Human Rights dimension and paradigms, not only in a multicultural society but also in a democratic nation- state which is significantly marked by minority rights and ethnic identity claims. Thus through a critical approach and a post-colonial perspective, this paper shows how this specific and particular dynamics of cultural identity casts an effect on the theory and practice of normative political theory and trajectories. The paper concludes that the Human Rights inherently invoke a challenge in the analysis of identity-formation and cultural heterogeneity dynamics, which are significant in the contemporary global democratic politics.