Why Sub-State Groups Are Endowed with Rights

Abstract

When should international law recognize sub-state groups and, consequently, their demands? Surprisingly, in the new and vast literature dealing with the questions of sub-state groups and their rights in international law, there is little discussion of this question. Usually it is assumed that certain cultural, racial, or religious groups qualify for international recognition, and others (implicitly) do not. Those scholars who have more deeply studied this question generally identify general abstract criteria for group-rights recognition, such as the permanency and involuntariness of group identity, the importance that members of the group ascribe to group identity, the numerical inferiority of group members, and so on. In this chapter, the author concludes that the identification of such abstract criteria for sub-state group qualification is of limited usefulness, and can exclude otherwise deserving groups. Rather, the recognition of a sub-state group as a rights-bearing entity is necessarily a function of deeper normative questions, and what international legal recognition in fact seeks to achieve.