Are Collective Rights Anti-Human?
| Author | Peter Juviler |
| Published date | 01 September 1993 |
| Date | 01 September 1993 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/016934419301100303 |
| Subject Matter | Part A: Article |
Are Collective Rights Anti-Human?
Theories on Self-Determination
and
Practice in Soviet Successor States
Peter Juviler *
Abstract
This essay first establishes necessary distinctions among collective group and solidarity
rights, so as to bring out the potentially explosive import of collective rights to 'internal'
self-determination. There follow arguments to this effect against recognizing collective
rights to ethnic self-determination. In the words of one strong critique of 'internal' self-
determination, it '(1) hinders the self-determination of individuals; (2) it prevents the
recognition of mutual needs and interests between people within existing political
communities; and (3) it exacerbates international tensions by giving just cause to all
nationalist claims to statehood.' 1In short, this critique goes, claims of collective rights
to ethnic self-determination are anti-human because a threat to individual human rights,
anti-human threats to existing diverse communities, and anti-human threats to peace.
Arguing against this viewpoint with the situation in the post-Soviet successor states
particularly
in
mind, the essay closes with reflections onimplications of its arguments for
law and action.
Introduction
'One of the central features of the great revolution of our times which has brought the modem world into
being is that the peoples
of
mankind in successive stages have been swept into avivid and sometimes all-
consuming sense of their existence as nations - or at least of their desire to create nations where none
existed before.' Rupert Emerson?
It
seemed that, as John Lennon dreamed, 'the world will be as one' during the euphoric
fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, the Czechoslovak 'velvet revolution' soon
to follow, and the spread of democratization from the USSR to Central Europe. But such
expectations proved premature. People in post-Communist societies did not all act toward
*Professor
of
Political Science, Barnard College; co-director, ColumbiaUniversity Center for the Study of
Human Rights. Co-coordinator, International Dialogue on Human Rights and the Future. Participationin
the conference on 'International Human Rights in a New World Order' wasmade possible in part through
a grant from Barnard College. Research for this work was supported in part by a grant from the
International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the U.S. Department of State. None of these
organizations is responsible for the views expressed. This writer is indebted also to Dr. Priit Jarve and
colleagues at the Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Law, Tallinn, and sister institutes in the two other
Baltic republics and in Yerevan, the Russian Intelligentsia for Karabakh and the Society for Russian Culture
and other organizers of CSCE parallel conference on nationality relations.
1 Omar Dahbour, Self-Determination in Political Philosophy and International Law, unpublished paper,
Columbia University Seminar on Human Rights, 23 March 1992. That author uses 'national self-
determination', to mean the self-determination of single ethnic groups in contrast with 'popular self-
determination'
of
multi-ethnic former colonies. I think he uses national self-determination too narrowly
since movements
of
collective self-determination, and regime nationalism, have been multi-ethnic as well
as uni-ethnic.
2 Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion
of
Asian andAfrican Peoples, Beacon
Press, Boston 1960, p. 89.
267
NQHR
3/1993
one another in the 'spirit of brotherhood' invoked by the Universal Declaration
of
Human
Rights (UDHR).
The ending of the cold war brought not only freedom but along with it a new stage
of the nationalist 'revolution of our times' as ethnic conflict spread into post-communist
Eurasia. Meanwhile,
in
their quest for a liberal democratic capitalist 'new world order',
and their fear
of
de-stabilization, politicians skirted issues
of
collective rights to ethnic
self-determination.
Intemationallaw
continued to hold that as a rule only individuals and
colonized or internally tyrannized 'peoples' and not minorities or 'indigenous peoples'
within existing states
had
rights of self-determination. These mean rights
of
free choice
in economic, social and cultural development, political status, and the disposition of their
own natural resources."
Human rights activists and scholars disagree among themselves over the standing of
collective rights
of
self-determination as human rights. Some of them hold collective rights
to be anti-human, non-recognizable beyond present limits of colonies' 'external' self-
determination. Others hold that limits of recognition must be stretched, under certain
conditions, to cover also variations
of
'internal' ethnic self-determination within or in
separation from existing states.
Such a recognition is not necessarily exclusionary and violative of individual rights.
Quite possibly it is needed to protect individual rights, by deterring violation
of
them on
the part
of
governments contemplating separatism within their realms, and to stabilize
inter-ethnic relations fraught with potential conflict. The failure to weigh and mediate
possible recognition
of
claims to ethnic self-determination at an early stage
of
tension will
not make the underlying issues go away; rather, it will increase the likelihood of
confrontation and conflict. In sum, this article suggests that collective rights to self-
determination are not inherently 'anti-human'. It supports the recognition of collective
human rights to 'internal' self-determination-autonomy or in extreme cases, full secession-
subject to certain pre-conditions and guarantees set out in the conclusion.
No secessionist claim was internationally recognized through much
of
the period from
1945 through the 1980s.4Recent diplomatic practice has come to recognize the right to
secession of ethnic groups in a range
of
contexts
of
rights violations and collapsing central
authority. Yet, writes one analyst, the 'traditional view is blind to the fact that many
demands for self-determination have been made and will continue to be made outside the
colonial context.
'5
Individual,
Group,
Solidarity
and
Collective
Rights
Individual rights remain the most widely recognized of 'human rights'. What are often
labelled 'group rights' are really varieties
of
the rights of individuals to associate in
pursuit
of
particular interests. Group rights include rights of labor unions, non-profit
organizations,parties,etc. to
organizeandparticipate
for' the social and political benefit
of their members. Solidarity rights are those humanrights seen as belonging to all humans
3 See infra, note 43.
4 Hurst Hannum, 'The Limits of Sovereignty and Majority Rule: Minorities, Indigenous Peoples, and the
Right to Autonomy', New Directions in Human Rights, ed. by Ellen I Lutz, Hurst Hannum, Kathryn J.
, Burke, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1989, p. 9.
5 M. Sornarajah, 'Internal Colonialism and Humanitarian Intervention', Georgia Journal
of
International
and Comparative Law, 11, 1981, p. 846.
268
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