Comparative Studies Of Minority Rights Regimes: Politics, Policy and Law
Professor Nergis Canefe
e-mail: nergiscanefe@gmail.com
Office: McLaughlin College 137
Office Hours: Wednesdays 10.00-11.00 or by appointment
Course Website: www.ncanefe.webs.com
Course Description and Pedagogical Objectives
The aim of this course is to provide the students with an overview of the legal and political
issues pertaining to minority rights and the rights of indigenous peoples from a
comparative perspective. The concepts of 'minority' and of ‘discrimination’ will be
scrutinized and consideration will be given as to which groups constitute a minority in
legal terms and how political claims are made to counter discrimination in different
political regimes. The minority rights jurisprudence to be covered in this course is
comprehensive and policy-relevant for both Canadian and comparative contexts.
The course supports York University’s overall objectives of cultural diversity and dissemination of
interdisciplinary research and scholarship. The course will serve students specializing in at least
five areas:
(a) Public Policy and Administration
(b) Certificate in Anti-Racist Research and Practice
(c) Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity
(d) Human Rights and Equity Studies
(e) Comparative Politics
With a notably large number of York students from a minority background, this course fills an
important gap in the existing curriculum on minority rights, public policy debates on minorities and
international human rights regimes. Students with an interest in minority groups and human
rights can build a substantial focus in this area by taking the proposed course in conjunction with
several other courses on refugees, migrants and human rights.
*Pre-requisites/Co-Requisites: familiarity with human rights, migration and refugee issues,
minority rights and minority politics; Degree Credit Exclusions (DCE): NA
Detailed Course Content
In public international law, legal protection for minorities began with the system of minority rights
created under the League of Nations through special treaties with Central and Eastern European
states. Particular vulnerabilities of minorities to human rights abuses were recognized by the UN
Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, as well as
academic projects such as the Early Warnings Signs. A range of legal instruments followed with
an international mandate. These include the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to
National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities and the Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples. The question remains, however, whether these legal tools serve the
purpose of protecting and shielding minorities from discrimination, abuse, exclusion and structural
marginalization.
Since 1990, minority rights have enjoyed a renaissance in Canada and Europe as well as at a
global scale. Many governments in the Global South signed up to a large number of international
human rights treaties with explicit minority rights clauses. In return, minorities and indigenous
peoples are pressuring their governments to realize their legal obligations dictated by those
treaties. Meanwhile, minority rights regimes had a varied impact on situations confronting
different minorities in dissimilar settings. This course reflects on whether current conceptions of
minority rights are well suited to such an extraordinarily heterogeneous group of ‘people’
constituting present-day minorities, some of whom have lost the cultural and linguistic features
that formerly distinguished them as a minority. In the first part of this course, the main
international instruments, jurisprudence and details of key legal cases concerning Minority Rights
Abuses will be covered. In the second part, the discussion will focus on the Canadian,
American, Australian and European Union minority rights regimes to underline similarities and to
highlight differences in a historical context. In the third part, the dual role of politics and
institutions in the articulation and diffusion of minority rights as human rights norms will be
attended in a global context. The course will take the liberal democratic model of rights as a
historical construct rather than as a finished project with universal applicability and predictable
solutions.
Course Requirements, Evaluation and Due Dates
All registered students must attend to the weekly-held 3 hour classes regularly. Attendance
sheets are circulated each class. Please notify the professor if you are to be absent for
extenuating circumstances for more than 2 weeks in a row.
Please also check the two following websites to make sure you are fully aware of
university regulations regarding academic honesty and plagirism.
http://www.yorku.ca/tutorial/academic_integrity/index.html
http://www.library.yorku.ca/ccm/ScottReference/reference/index.htm#style
Please submit a copy of the completion records of these two exercises listed above
attached to your first Critical Review Essay.
Course Evaluation Method
1st Critical Review Essay (1000 words) 25% (due the first week of October)
2nd Critical Review Essay (1000 words) 25% (due the first week of November)
Take Home Exam (Final) 40% (due the last day of classes)
Class Participation 10% (based on regular attendance)
Critical review essays are exercises on a chosen writer’s contributions to the contemporary
debates on minority rights. Students will be given a set of questions/concerns pertaining to each
reading or a combination of readings, depending on the course director’s choice, two weeks in
advance. The critical review essays are to be written ONLY on the assigned course material and
not on outside readings.
Where to hand in assignments
Note: The SPPA Department drop box at McLaughlin College is only to be used for late
papers. Essays must be submitted in class at the assigned date and time, or during the
professor’s office hours. Please keep electronic copies of all your essays. Please use e-mail
submission only in exceptional cases.
Late penalty
1 point grade per day of the total assignment grade will be taken out for the first 3 days.
Afterwords, the assignment will only be graded at a 50 percent rate until 2 weeks past its due
time. Past that date, the assignment will not be graded.
Important Notice Regarding Extenuating Circumstances
Students who encounter extenuating circumstances during the term that may interfere with the
successful completion of exams or other course assignments should discuss the matter with the
course director without delay.. Students with physical, psychiatric or learning disabilities may
request reasonable accommodations in teaching style or evaluation methods, as outlined in
Appendix A the Senate Policy on Students with Special Needs. They should advise the program
director at the earliest opportunity, so that appropriate arrangements may be with the assistance
of the Office for Persons with Disabilities, the Counseling Development Centre or the Learning
Disabilities Program.
Assigned Reading Material
All of our reading material is available on line through library e-sources data-bases. Students will
also be sent pdf file copies to their yorku.ca e-mail addresses. It is your own responsibility to print
this material and complete assigned readings for each week.
Week 1 Introduction
Week 2 Minority Rights at a Global Scale (September 12)
Fortman, Bas de Gaay. Minority Rights: A Major Misconception? Human Rights Quarterly Volume
33, Number 2, May 2011
Lose, Win, or Draw?: A Reexamination of Direct Democracy and Minority Rights
Author(s): Donald P. Haider-Markel, Alana Querze, Kara Lindaman
Source: Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Jun., 2007).
What Is a "Right to Have Rights"? Three Images of the Politics of Human Rights Author(s):
James D. Ingram
Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 102, No. 4 (Nov., 2008), pp. 401-416
Week 3 Minority Rights: Critical Debates (September 19)
Mutua, Makau. The Iraq Paradox: Minority and Group Rights in a Viable Constitution. 54 Buff. L.
Rev. 927 2006-2007.
Kymlicka, Will. The internationalization of minority Rights. I.CON, Volume 6, Number 1, 2008, pp.
1–32.
Markusse, Jan D. Are national minorities in the EU progressing towards the acquisition of
universal rights? Environment and Planning A 2007, volume 39, pages 1601-1617.
Week 4 Religion and Minority Rights (September 26)
Prete, Octavio Lo. The Protection of Religious Freedom by the National
Constitution and by Human Rights Treaties in the Republic of Argentina. 2009 BYU L. Rev. 673
2009.
Jonathan Fox, Patrick James & Yitan Li (2009): State Religion and Discrimination
Against Ethnic Minorities, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 15:2, 189-210.
Thio, Li-ann. CONSTITUTIONAL ACCOMMODATION OF THE RIGHTS OF ETHNIC AND
RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN PLURAL DEMOCRACIES: LESSONS AND CAUTIONARY TALES
FROM SOUTH-EAST ASIA. 22 Pace Int'l L. Rev. 43 2010.
Week 5 Development of Minority Rights Law (October 3)
---FIRST REVIEW ESSAY IS DUE--Koivurova, Timo. Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
Regarding Indigenous Peoples: Retrospect and Prospects. International Journal on Minority and
Group Rights 18 (2011) 1–37.
Gilbert, Geoff. Religio–nationalist minorities and the development of minority rights law. Review of
International Studies (1999), 25, 389–410.
Chapman, Chris and Lathryn Ramsay. Two Campaigns to Strengthen United Nations
Mechanisms on Minority Rights. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 18 (2011)
185–199.
Week 6 Minority Rights Debates in United States and Europe (October 10)
Uzunova, Iskra. ROMA: WHY MINORITY RIGHTS ARE FAILING. 27 Ariz. J. Int'l & Comp. L. 283
2010.
Black, Kevin. Should Black Immigrants Be Favored Over Black Hispanics and Black Multiracials
in the Admissions Processes of Selective Higher Education Programs? 54 Howard L.J. 255 20102011.
Asari, Eva-Maria et al. British National Identity and the Dilemmas of Multiculturalism. Nationalism
and Ethnic Politics, 14:1–28, 2008.
Week 7 Minority Rights Debates in Canada (October 17)
Tremblay, Luc. The Bouchard-Taylor report on cultural and religious accommodation:
multiculturalism by any other name? Review of Constitutional Studies. 15.1 (Jan. 2010): p35.
Bird, Karen. The Political Representation of Visible Minorities in Electoral Democracies: A
Comparison of France, Denmark, and Canada. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 11:4, 425-465
2005.
Jean-François Caron & Guy Laforest (2009): Canada and Multinational Federalism:
From the Spirit of 1982 to Stephen Harper's Open Federalism, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics,
15:1, 27-55.
Week 8 Language Rights (October 24)
Lindsey, Edward. Linguistic Minority Education Rights in Canada: An International and
Comparative Perspective. 13 Ga. J. Int’l & Comp. L. 515 198.
Elias, Stella Burch. Regional Minorities, Immigrants, and Migrants: The Reframing of Minority
Language Rights in Europe. 28 Berkeley J. Int'l L. 261 2010
Week 10 Constitutional Protection of Minority Rights (November 7)
--SECOND REVIEW ESSAY IS DUE--
Langer, Lorenz. Panacea or pathetic fallacy? The Swiss ban on minarets. Vanderbilt Journal of
Transnational Law. 43.4 (Oct. 2010): p863.
Saban, Ilan. Minority Rights in Deeply Divided Societies: A Framework for Analysis and the Case
of the Arab-Palestinian Minority in Israel.
The Politics of Acculturation: Female Genital Cutting and the Challenge of Building Multicultural
Democracies. Author(s): Lisa Wade
Source: Social Problems, Vol. 58, No. 4 (November 2011), pp. 518-537
Week 11 Nationalism and Minority Rights (November 14)
Eghosa E. Osaghae (2001): From accommodation to self‐ determination: Minority nationalism
and the restructuring of the Nigerian state, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 7:1, 1-20.
Guibernau, Monstressat. Nations without States: Political Communities in the Global Age. 25
Mich. J. Int’l L. 1251 2003-2004.
Andrew Blum (2001): Recognition as protection/recognition as threat: Understanding the link
between minority rights and ethnic hostility. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 7:2, 95-124.
Week 12 Clash of Rights? (November 21)
O’Connell, Rory. The role of dignity in equality law:Lessons from Canada and South Africa.
I•CON, Volume 6, Number 2, 2008, pp. 267–286.
Klein, Laura. Rights Clash: How Conflicts Between Gay Rights and Religious Freedoms
Challenge the Legal System. Georgetown Law Journal 2010.
Week 13 Last Class/Review (November 28)
December 5: --FINAL ESSAY/TAKE-HOME EXAM IS DUE—