Book Review: Devising an Adequate System of Minority Protection. Individual Human Rights, Minority Rights and the Right to Self-Determination, Minority Protection in Post-Apartheid South Africa
| Author | Annelies Verstichel |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X0401100405 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
418 11 MJ 4 (2004)
Kristin Henrard, Devising an Adequate System of Minority Protection.
Individual Human Rights, Minority Rights and the Right to Self-
Determination, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2000, xiii + 363 p.,
hardback, € 131,- and Minority Protection in Post-Apartheid South
Africa, Praeger, 2002, xvi + 310 p., hardback, $ 83.95
Both these books are based on the author’s updated doctoral thesis The Interrelation
between Individual Human Rights, Minority Rights and the Right to Self-Determination:
Theoretical Framework and Case Study of Post-Apartheid South Africa, which she
defended at the Catholic University of Louvain in September 1999. This study reports
on the important developments for minority protection in the 1990’s at the international
legal level (published as the first book) and the South African domestic level (published
as the second book). The choice of South Africa as a case study of minority protection
is especially refreshing as scholars usually focus their attention on Europe, which is the
laboratory for the drafting and implementation of international and national legal
minority protection instruments.
In the 1990’s, the implosion of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of Yugoslavia
accelerated initiatives by international organisations to deal with population diversity to
prevent ethnic conflict. The OSCE (then still CSCE) adopted documents such as the
1990 Copenhagen Document on the Human Dimension, which influenced the drafting
of the 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic,
Religious and Linguistic Minorities and the 1995 Council of Europe Framework
Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Furthermore, the OSCE Office of
the High Commissioner on National Minorities was established in 1992 as an
instrument of conflict prevention. Moreover, minority protection was made one of the
accession criteria to the Council of Europe and, later on, to the EU, which recently
included the protection of minorities in the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for
Europe as one of its founding values (Article I-2).
At the same time, the ethnically, religiously and linguistically highly-diverse South
African society was going through the difficult transition from apartheid to democracy.
The apartheid regime had discredited the minority protection discourse, abusing as it did
several techniques of minority protection, such as the giving of so-called ‘autonomy’ to
the black population by segregating them in ‘homelands’. Nevertheless, several
provisions of the Interim (1993) and 1996 Constitution and the case law of the South
African Constitutional Court reflect legal developments at the international level
regarding minority protection.
In the following review, I will discuss the two books, reflect on their content, and add
critical observations.
The earlier of the two books and the first part of the thesis, Devising an Adequate
System of Minority Protection. Individual Human Rights, Minority Rights and the Right
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