EVOLVING CONCEPTIONS OF GROUP RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

Russel Lawrence Barsh

 


For more than two centuries, European law and phi­losophy have been preoccupied with liberating individuals from groups, whether it be the family, church, class, or state. Thus while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 acknow­ledged the psychological significance of social life, refering vaguely to the individual's "duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personal­ity is possible," it made no distinction between "com­munity" and "state," and made no provision for the protection of groups other than the state itself. Its vision was restricted to the autonomy of individuals, and for the better part of forty years, every mention of group rights (or individual responsibilities) has invited charges of re­cidivism and statism.


All around us, current events are challenging the
usefulness of this traditional view. Linguistic, religious, national and ethnic factors are implicated in the great majority of civil disorders and "bush wars," aggravated by disparities in economic power that often seem as great within states as between North and South. The collective identity and rights of intermediate sized groups re­ligious congregations, ethnic communities, families — is no longer merely an academic proposition. On the con­trary, there is growing awareness that according such groups collective legal identity and rights may be ab­solutely essential for resolving many of the tensions in to­day's world without violence. My thesis is simple: recog­nizing the rights of groups other than States is a basic tool of peace.


The Universal Declaration reflected intellectual
optimism in the ability of individuals to defy the power of States. Contemporary reality suggests a new view of protecting human rights, however, which recognizes the importance of empowering groups within the State, and enabling them to counteract State power. From this per­spective, the recognition of group rights is not statist, but anti-statist.


This essay will address two basic questions: why have
group rights so recently re-emerged in international law, and what kinds of rights may be involved?


To a great extent, the ethnic problem has it origins
in the United Nations' practice of emancipating ter­ritories rather than peoples. In Africa and Asia, decolo­nisation reproduced within a few decades the same contradictions between ethnicity, geography and political authority that had taken centuries of war and shifting frontiers to accumulate in Europe. Invariably multiethnic and with little in the way of a common national history or identity other than the shared experience of colo­nialism, new states live in dread of their ethnic enclaves and stress political integration, cultural assimilation and national unity. Ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity is seen as a liability, exposing the state to divisive forces just waiting to be exploited by the former empires as well as hostile neighbours. These fears are heightened by the fact that a minority in one state may be the majority in an adjacent state.

The ideal most often expressed by new governments of both the North and the South is "new democratic cul­ture", to borrow an apt phrase from the Marxist lexicon. Independance and development are supposed to emancipate citizens from regressive cultural forces and lead them into a new, free, rational association based on national aspirations rather than backward-looking tradi­tions. In reality, however, new nationalisms are not ra­tional or synthetic but reflect, and frequently enshrine, the goals of numerically or politically dominant ethmes. Like the European states from which they were born by decolonisation or revolution, new nations are ethnocentric or, as the sociologist Rudolfo Stavenhagen correctly de­scribes the situation, "ethnocratic." An ethnocracy may have no particular ethnic costume, but a single ethnie or ethnic coalition rules.

Ethnic conflict and development

Of course this process has been evolving since the old European empires began to crumble in the wake of the First World War. What has aggravated matters is the rapidly growing industrial demand for fuel, metals, and fibre as much of the world modernizes. Natural resource extractors are rapidly expanding their operations into previously isolated areas, not only in developing countries but in the peripheral re­gions of the larger developed states as well, e.g. the Arctic regions of North America, the Soviet Union and Europe, and the intermontaine region of Asia. A great number of peoples who have enjoyed practical autonomy for centuries are suddenly finding them­selves in conflict with national and international de­velopment schemes.

When a dominant ethnie seizes state power it often reproduces colonial relations with relatively powerless peripheral minorities. Natural resources are extracted zealously from the countryside to energize urban centres, aggravating regional disparities in in­come and even rendering exploited regions less habitable by destroying forests, wildlife, soils and water. International institutions reinforce this by fi­nancing large-scale projects that are capable of displac­ing and disrupting, regional ethnic minorities defini­tively, either making them poorer and more power­less, or integrating them into the national economy in a subordinate role such as lowpaid transient labour. The result can be a vicious cycle of powerlessness and underdevelopment. Eghbal (1983) politely calls this process "development exclusion" rather than internal colonialism; in fact it is colonialism wearing the mask (as it always does) of development.

Once large-scale projects get underway, peripheral groups have little choice but to participate in what­ever way they can. Rising prices and ecological dete­rioration make them more dependent on food imports and cash income, which in turn may result in dete­riorating health (Waldram 1985) and force them to cannibalize their remaining natural resources (Collins 1986). The role of development projects in triggering firewood shortages and famine was highlighted in the 1980 World Conservation Strategy, a collaboration between UNEP, FAO, UNESCO, and the Interna­tional Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, an NGO. Yet these same projects tend to enrich developing countries' urban technocrats and entrepreneurs — as well as overseas financial institu­tions, consultants and contractors. In an ethnocracy, regional and ethnic economic disparities thus widen dramatically.

The disruption of regional ethnic enclaves is often not only the result of large-scale development projects, but the underlying objective. This has been especially evident in a number of recent "transmigration" or ag­rarian resettlement schemes in southern Asia, includ­ing Sri Lanka (Ponnambalam 1983). The fact that none of these projects have been cost-beneficial in strict economic terms (Oberai 1986) gives rise to suspicion that their real goals are typically political: if not to dilute ethnic enclaves, then to relieve popula­tion pressure and economic tensions in urban areas, or to shift population to strategically-sensitive areas, as may be the case in Indonesia's efforts to settle its eas­ternmost territorial claims. Otherwise uneconomical demonstrations of sovereignty are not the exclusive possession of developing countries, as illustrated by Canadian efforts to develop marginal Arctic mineral deposits.

Exclusive or discriminatory development strategies increase ethnic tensions by adding economic substance to real or imagined cultural and historical grievances, and readily lead to violence. This suggests what might be called the paradox of national unity: the harder states try to integrate the diverse elements of their populations, the more disunited and fragile they be­come. Sharing power through federalism or autonomy arrangements, on the other hand, institutionalizes the centrifugal forces in a regionalised, multiethnic society. While recognising the legitimacy of ethnic dif­ferences, it provides a means for keeping them in a peaceful, albeit dynamic balance.

It is of course necessary to distinguish genuine conflicts from ethnic opportunism. As Smith (1981) observes, ethnicity is readily exploited by newly-emerging, educated elites to justify reproducing power centres and bureaucracies. It is just as readily ex­ploited by third powers to destabilize nascent national governments. So-called "bush wars" along disputed frontiers that transect ethnic regions, such as the cur­rent conflict along the Rio Coco in central America, or regional secessions such as the Katangan rebellion a generation ago, arguably create rather than culminate ethnic tensions. At the same time, it is foolhardy to dismiss "tribalism" in Africa, for in­stance, as entirely the work of neo-colonialists and op­portunistic local leaders. Refusing to accomodate ethnicity simply makes it stronger and attracts more extreme leadership.

There is also a need to recognize the relationship between ethnic and class conflict, especially in Asian countries suffering from residual feudalism, or the strongly hierarchical societies of Latin America. When one ethnic group or coalition first acquires state power or financial means following independence, and thereby cuts off (or devours) the development of all others, the resulting struggle is ethnic in appearance and rhetoric but economic in its origins. The fact that economic conflicts tend to trigger ethnic ones does not make the ethnic factor irrelevant, however, because merely sharing national income and employment more equally does not make these conflicts disappear. With­out measures for sharing power as well, peripheral groups feel they have no security against future ex­ploitation, and no opportunity for real development in the sense of achieving what is important to them. Groups trust power in the hands of their own.

Which groups have rights?

How has the international legal system responded to this new strategic reality? The traditional dicho­tomy between the rights of the individual and the state remains a formidable conceptual barrier for Wes­tern governments, and they reflexively reject collective rights, like economic and social rights, as subversion from the East. For its part, the East avoids any con­crete elaboration of these rights because the legal ack­nowledgment of ethnic and religious groups is sub­versive to central planning. Developing nations see concern for disenfranchised groups as simply the lat­est Northern pretence for intervening in the affairs of the South.

This near-stalemate of mutual suspicion has pre­vented any coordinated legislative attack on the issue of group rights. There have developed, instead, a number of separate strands of thinking, reflected in a proliferation of definitions and institutions within the United Nations. At least four distinct kinds of groups are now recognised, for different legal purposes.

Peoples, the subject of self-determination and deco­lonisation in the Charter and subsequent instruments, are nowhere defined, but General Assembly Resolu­tion 1541 (XV) defines the related concept of "non-self-governing territory" as any place that is culturally and geographically distinct from the state administer­ing it, and which is economically or politically sub­ordinate. Identifying peoples has been the responsibil­ity of the Special Committee on Decolonisation since 1960, but no consistent criteria can be detected in its practice. "Peoples" have been recognised when it was expedient to do so, or when the eruption of an armed struggle made classification disputes academic.

Minorities are generally identified by numerical ra­ther than geographical factors, but the Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission have repeat­edly failed to agree on a more precise definition. So­viet writers such as Levin (1963) tend to emphasize geographic dispersal to distinguish minorities from peoples, while Dmstein (1976) maintains that peoples, too, may be dispersed without losing their right to self-determination. Although Deschenes (1985) has argued that only non-dominant groups should be considered minorities, this makes little difference as long as the only right assigned to them (by Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) is freedom to enjoy their own languages, cul­ture and religion. An open-ended working group of the Commission has been labouring unsuccessfully for nearly a decade on elaborating additional principles of minority rights.

The term indigenous was originally used in the League Covenant to distinguish colonised peoples from their colonisers. Beginning with ILO Convent­ion No. 107 (1957), it assumed a somewhat different meaning, referring to the "less advanced" or unassi-milated elements of an aboriginal population that re­mained within the borders of an independent state. The only real difference between an "indigenous pop­ulation" and a colonised "people," then, is demog­raphy. If the colonisers remained a numerical minor­ity, the aboriginal inhabitants have been considered a "people," as in Namibia. Where the invaders mul­tiplied and formed a new majority, the groups they engulfed have been called "indigenous." The termino­logy conceals an essentially political bias against divid­ing the contiguous territory of existing states, regard­less of how that territory was acquired. What rights to autonomy indigenous groups may have, short of inde­pendence, is now before the Sub-Commission's Working Group on Indigenous Populations, which has a mandate to develop a "declaration of principles" (Barsh 1986).

ILO Convention No. 107 made a further distinc­tion between indigenous and tribal populations. A re­cent ILO Meeting of Experts recognised that "tribal" implies a form of social organisation as opposed to historical factors as in the case of "indigenous." Some groups are tribal but not indigenous, others are in­digenous but not tribal. Asian and African states have difficulty with the idea that some of their constituent ethnics are more indigenous than any of the others, but concede the existence of marginalised groups that have been either excluded from the national economy, or victimized by it. There appears to be growing agreement that these "tribal" groups warrant the same general kinds of protection as indigenous groups in the regions of the world colonised by Europeans.

Obvious these definitions overlap. A people may also be a minority while it awaits its independence; if divided by state borders it may be a minority in one state and a majority in another. Peoples and minori­ties may also be indigenous, or tribal.

The nature of group rights

It will be essential at the outset to distinguish between the rights of categories of persons, such as non-smokers, the elderly, or the disabled, and the rights of organised groups which have some sociopolitical struc­ture of their own. Individuals may be assigned rights because they belong to categories, while group rights only exist to the extent that they can be exercised through collective institutions (Ben-Israel 1981). In­deed, group rights are rights to establish and maintain institutions such as schools, co-operatives, and legisla­tive bodies. From this it is clear that the right to en­joy one's own culture, a right of persons belonging to minority groups under Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is not a group right at all unless it implies the right to organise sep­arate, culturally-distinct communities.

We must likewise distinguish between the power of states to classify persons and discriminate in favour of some of them — subject always to certain limita­tions, such as race — and the inherent right of certain kinds of groups to exist and to define themselves (Van Dyke 1974). Nearly all laws create categories. This in­cludes many international instruments, such as the convention on torture, which establishes a fund for the victims ,of that crime. But the victims of torture were not a group possessing collective rights before the convention, and it will not make them one. On the other hand, laws can acknowledge, but neither create nor destroy the Sioux tribe or the Serbian na­tionality — only genocide can accomplish that, and we presumably agree that would be unacceptable. Indeed, the 1948 convention on genocide, while prohibiting only the physical destruction of groups, implies more generally the right of groups to collective existence.

Lastly, there is a relationship, as well as an impor­tant difference, between the rights of groups and the right to individuals to freedom of association, found in Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The right to join groups such as trade unions necessarily implies the right to form groups, albeit within the existing institutional structure of the state. Association is a right to or­ganize and communicate, but confers no power on the organizations thus formed. Hence Article 8 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights must explicitly recognize trade un­ions' right to strike. Similarly, the fact that Native Canadian women have a right to live, if they wish, on an Indian Reserve among other Native people, as the Human Rights Committee ruled in Lovelace (1981), does not in itself establish that Natives have the right to self-government.

Group rights are therefore more than the right of members of groups to physical existence, cultural tolerance, or association with one another. On the contrary, group rights are inherently institutional in their nature and exercise. Thus while individual rights belong to the realm of arithmethical equality, i.e., each person having the same rights and responsabilities within the state, group rights fall within the concept of geometric equality in which the state may consist of different organized communities possessing different rights and relationships with one another. This is what states most strenuously resist, yet it is little diffe­rent from the practice of federalism, especially in fed­eral states such as Canada which have admitted new members on varying terms and conditions.

Within this context it is possible for groups to have both positive and negative rights. The right to a public benefit, such as education, is a positive right. Freedom from discrimination or interference is nega­tive. Traditional conceptions of human rights in the West involve negative rights, while newly-emerging economic and social rights are chiefly positive in na­ture. It will be much easier to reach international con­sensus on the negative rights of groups, including exi­stence and autonomy, than positive rights to enjoy ad­vantageous public encouragement and subsidies. Prog­rammes to stimulate cultural diversity and cultural de­velopment, already undertaken by many states, go beyond what may be required for the reconciliation and co-existence of groups in today's world, but may yield considerable benefits for future generations.

Current proposals

The heart of the matter remains groups' desire to maintain some degree of institutional identity separate from the state. Just as self-determination has been called the right from which all other human rights flow (Gros Espiell 1980, 159), group rights generally reflect a desire, and all too often a genuine need, for collective self-defence against state power. As tradi­tionally interpreted, at least, the right to self-deter­mination may go too far in suggesting a choice bet­ween the existing state and the establishment of a new state. Over the past few years there accordingly has been growing interest in the idea of "autonomy" or "internal" self-determination as an alternative to com­plete independence (Hannum and Lillich 1980; Sohn 1980). Thus while a recent International Labour Of­fice (1986) expert meeting was reluctant to conclude that indigenous and tribal peoples have the right to complete independence, it nonetheless was com­fortable recommending that these groups enjoy "as much control as possible" over their own economies and territories.

At least three important new concepts have emerged from recent United Nations debates. The most far-reaching may be the idea that self-determina­tion is a continuing right, not one lost when a people achieves independent statehood. Forcefully articulated by Australia (United Nations 1985, 170), the main thrust of the argument is that individuals retain the right to influence government policy through dem­ocratic means. In other words, it is an argument for a right to democracy. It also implies, however, a "right of divorce" in the extreme case when a group is tot­ally debarred from power, as Eastern European jurists have long argued from somewhat different premisses (Bokor-Szego 1970). This comports with General As­sembly Resolution 2625(XXV), which conditions the territorial integrity of existing states on the represen-tativity of their governments.

Another new factor in the debate is the principle of "popular participation," which has been closely as­sociated with proposals for a "right to development" (United Nations 1985). All that seems to be interned by the proponents is the right of individuals to have some voice in decisions affecting their socio-economic development. This might be satisfied through "bot­tom-up" development strategies, the encouragement of co-operatives and trade unions, and various forms of community consultation. Of course, popular participa­tion should mean more than a right to be heard. It should represent an effective voice in decisions, and this is turn implies some actual sharing of decision-making power. Since the subject of the right is the in­dividual, however, it does not really help us establish the legal personality of groups. Capitalist states will see "popular participation" in voting and the freedom of economic association in corporations and unions, and socialist states in a collectivization of ownership.

The latest twist is Austria's proposal that a draft declaration on "the rights of persons belong to min­orities" explicitly protect the demographic integrity of ethnic regions (United Nations 1986, 117). The ob­vious targets of the proposal are transmigration and resettlement schemes calculated to break up regional concentrations of ethnic economic and political power. There are broader political implications, however, should such a proposal be adopted, since the demog­raphic protection of regional minorities guarantees, within an administratively decentralized state, a cer­tain degree of localized ethnic control of the state ap­paratus.

Nearly all modern states are associations of diffe­rent peoples, frequently in explicit confederations re­cognizing their independent origins and diversity. What states resist is the idea that federal or autonomy arrangements are a matter of right rather than a result of history or convenience. Even if distinct groups en­joy an autonomy right that falls short of "divorce," the recognition of such a right creates an engine for continuous constitutional revolution in culturally-di­verse states. For bureaucrats, the prospect of endless renegotiations of power relations with the state is hor­rific. From an individual perspective, however, the consolidation of state power is just as threatening, and a dynamic balance of power between the state and its constituent groups offers a more workable com­promise between anarchy and centralism than tradi­tional conceptions of individual civil liberties alone.

NOTES

Russel L. Barsh, "Indigenous Peoples: An Emerging Object of International Law," American Journal of International Law 80:369-85 (1986).

Ruth Ben-Israel, "Is the Right to Strike a Collective Human Right?" Israel Yearbook of International Law 11:195-216 (1981).

Hannah Bokor-Szego, New States and International Law (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1970).

Jane L. Collins, "Smallholder Settlement of Tropical South America: The Social Causes of Ecological Destruction," Human Organization 45:1-10 (1986).

Jules Deschenes, "Proposal concerning a definition of the term 'minority,' " U.N. Doc. No. E/CN.4/Sub.2/l985/31 (1985).

Yoram Dinstein,  "Collective Human Rights of Peoples and Minorities," International and Comparative Law Quarterly 25:102-20 (1976).


Afsaneh Egbahl, "Ethnicite-Etat et Srategie de Developpement
en Afrique ou le Developpement-Exclusion," International Foundation for Development Alternatives Dossier 36:18-29 (1983).


Hector Gros Espiell, "The Right to Self-Determination; Im­plementation of United Nations Resolutions," U.N. Doc. No. E/CN.4/Sub 2/405/Rev. 1 (1980).


Hurst Hannum and Richard B. Lillich, "The Concept of Au­tonomy in International Law," American Journal of International Law 74:858-889 (1980).


International Labour Office, "Meeting of Experts on the Revi­sion of the Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention, 1957 (No. 107)," ILO Doc. No.
APPL/MER/107/1986/D.7 (1986).


D.B. Levin, "The Principle of Self-Determination of Nations in International Law," .7.962 Soviet Yearbook of International Law 45 (1963).


Sandra Lovelace v.
Canada, Human Rights Committee Com­munication No. 24/1977, in Selected Decisions Under The Optional Protocol, U.N. Doc. No. CCPR/C/OP/1 (1985), at 83-85.


A.S. Oberai, "Land settlement policies and population redis­tribution in developing countries: Performance, problems and prospects,"
International Labour Review 125:141-61 (1986).


S. Ponnambalam,
Sri Lanka: National Conflict and the Tamil Liberation Struggle (London: Zed, 1983).


Louis Sohn, "The Concept of Autonomy in International Law and the Practice of the United Nations,"
Israel Law Review 2:180-90 (1980).


A.D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge University Press, 1981).


United Nations Economic and Social Council, "Popular Parti­cipation in its Various Forms as an Important Factor in Develop­ment and in the Full Realization of Human Rights," U.N. Doc. No. E/CN.4/1985/10 (1985).


United Nations Economic and Social Council, "Report of the Openended working group set up by the Commission on Human Rights to consider the drafting of a declaration on the rights of persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious and linguistic min­orities," U.N. Doc. No. E/CN.4/1986/43 (1986).


Vernon Van Dyke, "Human Rights and the Rights of Groups," American Journal of Political Science 18:725-41 (1974).


James B. Waldram, "Hydroelectric Development and Dietary Delocalization in
Northern Manitoba, Canada," Human Organiza­tion 44:41-49 (1985).

 

Russel Barsh taught law and public policy at the Uni­versity of Washington in Seattle from 1974 to 1984, when he assumed full-time legal and advocacy responsibilities for the Mikmag Grand Council and other North American in­digenous communities. He has been participating in United Nations human rights meetings since 1983 as a representa­tive of the Four Direction Council, an indigenous North American non-governmental organization of which the Mikmag Grand Council is a member.

 

 

 

Transnational Perspectives, Volume 13, Number 1, 1987