Rights of minorities and indigenous peoples as collective rights: a critical appraisal

A concern for minorities and indigenous people propelled political philosophers and different world bodies to ensure a mechanism of safeguard for the protection of their rights of property, culture, beliefs, traditions or any other relevant. Since historically they have been subjected to the prevalent unjust and denied by the ruling legal system, a quest for establishing collective rights of these people aimed national and international authorities is a cognizable development in last few decades. In the recent past the international protection of minorities is being governed by Article 27 of ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). In 2007, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is adopted, which recognises the group or collective rights of indigenous peoples in addition to individual rights. But some commentators view that collective rights pose thereat to the territorial integrity of States, but accepted on empirical grounds, because national and international law have recognised rights of groups such as – ‘indigenous peoples and minorities rights within the framework of international human rights’ does not violate the principle of ‘equality in law’. As the minorities and indigenous peoples bear indispensable integrity with their religious spirituality, language and traditional ways of life, in the legal framework they also should have a ‘right to be different’. For minorities and indigenous peoples practices over individual and collective rights vary in terms of nation, region and time. Any wield of rights in the form of collective mechanism by the minorities and indigenous peoples; getting increasing justifications by recent developments in international laws and a universal licit outlook