Abstract
Why should international human rights law vest members of a minority community with rights that secure a measure of autonomy from the state in which they are located? Answers to this question typically rest on a commitment to the protection of certain universal attributes of human identity from the exercise of sovereign power. Minority protection thus operates on the assumption that religious, cultural, and linguistic affiliations are essential features of what it means to be human. This essay offers an alternative account of why minority rights possess international significance, one that trades less on the currency of religion, culture, and language and more on the value of international distributive justice. On this approach, international minority rights speak to wrongs that international law itself produces by organizing international political reality into a legal order. This account avoids the normative instabilities of attaching universal value to religious, cultural, and linguistic affiliation and, instead, challenges the international legal order to remedy pathologies of its own making.

From previous post, to be seen... I know I'm watching but what to say, just one more reason to speed up the program...it's always about the same, you don't see that in Wales or Scotland....People proud of their culture, celebrating it, speaking their language and not feeling any denial of their rights just don't do that kind of ugly stuff, the regime is responsible and should be blamed, that's my opinion and why I support the program.