Joshua Castellino

The protection of minorities and indigenous peoples in international law: a comparative temporal analysis

It is easy to detect a sense of achievement with the extent to which the human rights regime has progressed 60 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The relative international successes suggest a bright outlook for the future of the human rights regime. However, an important lacuna remains in the attention that ought to be paid to minorities, indigenous peoples and others in vulnerable situations, including in some instances, women. This paper argues that despite the creation of sophisticated systems of international human rights law, the regimes for the protection of minority rights were stronger before the United Nations (UN) era. In support of this argument it seeks to assess regimes that existed at three different times, attempting to extrapolate and analyse the snapshots presented by these through the lens of evolving human rights law.

The MDGs and international human rights law: a view from the perspective of minorities and vulnerable groups

This paper argues that neither the growth of a stronger regime of human rights, nor the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), would automatically guarantee an amelioration of the plight of vulnerable groups. Drawing on examples from Vietnam, Mexico and Ghana, this paper, rather than critique the ‘standards’, endorses each regime/programme with the suggestion of an inclusionary caveat: that both pay special attention to the plight of minorities and indigenous groups, and that the extent to which either process is deemed successful be measured against the extent to which it addresses the plight of vulnerable groups such as indigenous peoples and minorities within states.

The Declaration and Its Guidance: A View from South Asia

The tendency of grouping all of ‘Asia’ and ‘Oceania’ together often imbalances perspectives on global themes.1 This is the case with minority rights in a more pronounced manner than many others, where there is often concerted focus on sub-regions in Europe, while Asian issues remain superficially touched upon.2 Asia, containing 60 per cent of the world’s population,3 may be understood as comprising at least five distinct sub-regions.4 This chapter is focused on South Asia, which, for the purposes of this review, includes the States of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Legitimate questions could be asked as to whether Afghanistan is more logically grouped with other Central Asian States, with which it shares significant minority populations. We have resolved this dilemma for the purposes of this commentary by relying on how the States self-identify, and thus considerable emphasis has been placed on membership in the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (saarc).5 It needs to be highlighted

The Title to Dokdo/Takeshima: Addressing the Legacy of World War ii Territorial Settlements/Finding the Right Settlement of Dispute Mechanism

The seas of South East Asia present a succinct backdrop against which several current disputes are being played out. At stake are the maritime boundaries of China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. In seeking to delimit such international maritime boundaries, vital questions are being asked concerning sovereignty over islands, reefs and islets, and the value that can be ascribed to these following the determination of sovereignty. This paper seeks to examine one such dispute, between South Korea and Japan, concerning contested sovereignty over two traditionally uninhabited islets that lie in the sea between the two countries, namely the islets of Dokdo (Korean name)/Takeshima (Japanese), also known as Liancourt Rocks (English terminology).

Islam and public controversy in Europe

appropriate discourse, insist on individually focused and therapeutic models for social change, and smooth out narratives and inter-group dialogue without fostering activist responses that might best advocate for racial and social justice at needed structural levels. Here I wish Voyer had provided counter-narratives in this chapter to further disrupt the force of this discipline. However, that discipline is so strong and widely utilized that another framework may be lacking, which is itself revealing. The final substantive chapter brought in various themes that had been present previously in the book, such as the crucial question of how and to what extent Somali immigrants’ blackness interfaces with their ethnic and religious affiliations as a diverse body of mostly Muslim immigrants – both in how they view themselves and how they are received by the community. It also discusses gender relations and clan conflict. While certainly important to a thorough and detailed ethnography, this chapter read a bit like a catch-all and was in some ways subject to something that occasionally frustrated me about the book as a whole – it is heavy on detail and information but at times thin on analysis and theory. The very short conclusion ponders the author’s reflexivity as a white outsider to the community and briefly restates its major themes. In all, this book provides important contributions to our understanding of immigrant incorporation into non-urban communities, especially given the largely positive and inclusive response that seems uncharacteristic of prior studies of communities who are similarly situated. It also challenges us to examine our larger frameworks for diversity, particularly as they are mandated at the expense of real understanding and capacity-building for ordinary folks who are not educated and sensitive towards the complex narratives around identity and justice. While at times overemphasizing detail at the expense of analysis, and relying on specialist language best suited to sociologists, the book is valuable for the critical and complex ways that it challenges our notions of incorporation, diversity, social justice and small-town life.

Paradoxes of liberal democracy: Islam, Western Europe, and the Danish cartoon crisis

This book focuses on responses and attitudes towards Muslims in Denmark in the aftermath of the famous ‘cartoon crisis’. It asserts values of liberal democracy highlighting a ‘solid wall of support’ for Muslims in Denmark after the controversy. Celebrating Denmark’s liberal democratic credentials, it claims to offer hope to those attempting to reconcile ‘secular values of liberal democracy’ with ‘the religious faith of Muslims in Europe’. It highlights ‘citizen’s capacity for democratic citizenship’ (xiv) as autonomous agents framing societal responses, claiming:

Muslim political participation in Europe

political rights to the exclusion of all other aspects of citizenship. This is particularly evident in the chapters of Haley and Dale, who remind us that, historically, full political enfranchisement has been the exception rather than the norm, but that members of non-democratic states (or disenfranchised members of democratic ones) are still citizens: subject both to the demands of governing bodies but also, in many cases, able to claim certain rights and protections from them. Some essays, such as Smith’s, examine the extent to which citizenship is a status grounded in identity, whereas others explore what contributor Catherine Neveu calls ‘the horizontal dimension’ of multilevel citizenship (205); the ways in which relations between individuals are just as constitutive of both formal and practical citizenship as are relations between individuals and states. One weakness of the collection is a general lack of engagement with literatures critiquing conventional citizenship theories from critical race and gender perspectives. Scholars writing in these traditions (including, but not limited to, Nira Yuval-Davis, Nancy Fraser, Aihwa Ong and Patricia Hill Collins) have already explored many of the ways that Liberal, Republican or Marshallian frameworks fail to capture how minority group or marginalized subjects experience citizenship. Some of these writings also have called for multi-layered understandings of the concept similar to those advocated in this collection. More dialogue with these writings would have been a theoretical asset to the book and their absence is somewhat puzzling. Despite this one shortcoming, however, Multilevel Citizenship is a tightly written and useful volume for social scientists, historians and legal scholars, as well as advanced graduate students, doing work on issues related to citizenship, nationality or immigration.

International legal responses to uprisings in the Middle East

The Arab Uprising is part of a wider mass global quest aimed at establishing legitimate government. While such movements disrupt order in the short term, they could lead to the establishment of effective democratic institutions. This paper critically assesses the role international law plays in such crises, arguing for greater objectivity in ensuring smooth transitions from authoritarian unrepresentative government towards more democratically oriented ones.

No Room at the International Table: The Importance of Designing Effective Litmus Tests for Minority Protection at Home

Despite being at the forefront of the development of human rights law, minority rights as a sui generis discourse has slipped away from the forefront of the international human rights regime. This has occurred despite the continued salience of questions concerning identity in international law and politics. This paper argues that the closing down of space at international level has meant that further developments protecting individuals irrespective of their identity, are more likely to come at national level, and suggests theaters, theories, and models in various states, where minorities are currently negotiating policies that are worth considering and replicating elsewhere.

The UN Principle of Self-Determination and Secession from Decolonized States: Katanga and Biafra

[Summary of the book containing this chapter:] Secession is a detachment of a territory from an existing state with the aim of creating a new state on the detached territory. Secession is usually an outcome of the political mobilization of a population on the territory to be detached and, as a political phenomenon, is a subject of study in the social sciences. Its impact on inter-state relations is a subject of study in international relations. But secession is also subject to regulation both in the constitutional law of sovereign states and in international law. Following a spate of secessions in the early 1990s, legal scholars have proposed a variety of ways to regulate the international responses to attempts at secessions. Moreover, since the 1980s normative justification of secession has been subject to an intense debate among political theorists and moral philosophers. This research companion has the following three complementary aims. First, to offer an overview of the current theoretical approaches to secession in the social sciences, international relations, legal theory, political theory and applied ethics. Second, to outline the current practice of international recognition of secession and current domestic and international laws which regulate secession. Third, to offer an account of major secessionist movements - past and present - from a comparative perspective. In their accounts of past secessions and current secessionist movements, the contributors to this volume focus on the following four components: the nature and source of secessionist grievances, the ideologies and techniques of secessionist mobilization, the responses of the host state or majority parties in the host state, and the international response to attempts at secession. This provides a basis for identification of at least some common patterns in the otherwise highly varied processes of secession.