Examining the Suitability of the International Minority Rights Regime as an Avenue for Advancing Self-Determination Claims

Abstract

The international legal right of all ‘peoples’ to self-determination applies indeterminately to minority groups. The limited jurisprudence tends toward an ‘internal’ dimension of the right being available to minorities, to be exercised and negotiated domestically. However, where a state-minority negotiation process fails, the international law of self-determination is inadequate to resolve the ensuing deadlock. Accordingly, this article examines the suitability of minority protections under international human rights law (‘minority rights’) as a supplementary set of rules by which disputes concerning the self-determination of minorities might be resolved. It argues that owing to the strong conceptual and doctrinal overlap between the two areas, the enforcement of minority rights is a suitable strategy for advancing a self-determination claim. However, two bars within existing international human rights enforcement procedures – the non-justiciability of self-determination, and the requirement that complainants must be “victims of a violation” – substantially reduce the utility of this strategy at present.