The Legal Theory of Minority Rights

Author: Zhou Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-04-01
Features: "Preserving minority groups and peacefully accommodating multicultural and multi-ethnic social communities is one of the most important issues in contemporary world politics. The United Nations and various regional international organizations are widely discussing and regulating this issue. This book is of great importance in drawing attention to the extensive work done by the international community on this topic. It is crucial to study how governments of different countries formulate corresponding domestic policies and legal systems regarding minority issues based on the standards established by the United Nations and regional organizations. I believe Mr. Zhou Yong's research will make significant contributions to advancing this work." - Asbj?rn Eide, Chairman of the UN Working Group on Minorities
This book is a decade-long research by young legal scholar Zhou Yong, with the significance of filling an academic gap. It is divided into three parts: general legal theory on minority rights, specific case law, and relevant international documents, forming a trinity. To this day, the evolution of human civilization and social interaction has led to the formation of a multi-ethnic and multicultural population in the majority of countries in the world. In the past, most societies have experienced a certain degree of tension between different ethnic and cultural groups. Since the 1980s, political, economic, social, and cultural conflicts generated by this diversity within and between nations have become one of the major issues of international concern. Mediating such conflicts cannot rely solely on moral goodwill and political strategies but must also be based on fundamental human values such as fairness, justice, and human rights, using legal technical means to coordinate and build harmonious ethnic relations.
The main purpose of this book is to analyze and observe the process of establishing and implementing international standards for minority rights at the global and regional levels, to explain the problems and controversies surrounding these activities, to explore the legitimacy of various arguments on minority rights, and to clarify how abstract and ambiguous legal provisions are applied through the practice of (quasi) judicial protection of minority rights, thereby forming case law principles in the process.