Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues on ‘The Place of the Human Rights of Minorities in the Institutions, Structures and Initiatives of the United Nations’

1. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (UNDRM) develops a positive vision of minority rights, that extends beyond the negative formulation of Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Beyond mere non-interference, the UNDRM requires that States not only adopt measures to facilitate and promote minority identities but also create the societal conditions for minorities to flourish. 2. This submission focuses on how standards in the UNDRM have subsequently been reflected and mainstreamed in the practice of UN treaty bodies, specifically in the Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee (HRC), Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Section 1 starts with some general observations on the visibility of minority rights within the work of the relevant monitoring bodies and Sections 2 and 3 then proceed to provide more specific observations and examples relating to the preservation and promotion of minority identity and to the creation of wider societal conditions required for the flourishing of minorities and of their rights. Section 4 concludes the submission with some specific recommendations for more visibility and better mainstreaming and integration of minority rights within the work of UN treaty monitoring bodies.