Sverige, Norge och det minoritetspolitiska vägskälet : En jämförande fallstudie om individuella och kollektiva rättigheter i en samisk kontext

Minority rights has been a common subject of discussion for several years and since the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted the interest in the matter has far from decreased. One of the countries voting in favor of the declaration is Sweden, and although they volunteerly decided to comply with the agreement they have received numerous complaints on how they treat the indigenous people inhabiting certain areas of the country. When constructing new rights, a plan on how to make them apply to everyone who is entitled to them has to be formed, which can be a bit challenging to say the least. This paper presents two different approaches used when creating minority rights – individual rights and group rights – and applies them on two cases – Sweden and Norway – in order to discover which of these methods dominate said field. This is made through examining three different categories of rights – political, economical and social – to see which differences can be found between Sweden and Norway when it comes to indigenous people’s rights, and how these differences relate to individual and group rights. The conclusion of the study is that group rights is the dominating approach, but focusing on both groups and individuals has been the most successful method yet