For much of the postwar period, international law contained few if any provisions specifically targeted at the protection of ethnocultural minorities. In recent years, however, particularly since 1990, there has been an explosion of interest in codifying minority rights, both within the United Nations and within regional bodies, such as the Council of Europe or the Organization of American States. This course will consider a number of issues by these developments, including (a) why minority rights emerged as a priority for the international community in the post-Cold War era; (b) the categories that are used to identify different types of minorities, such as `indigenous peoples’,`national minorities’, and `migrant workers’, and how these are viewed as raising different types of challenges; and (c) the consequences, both intended and unintended, of this process of codifying international minority rights norms on state-minority relations around the world. More generally, the course will attempt to identify the progressive potential in this process, but also some of the moral ambiguities and political complexities involved.1 credit, fall termProfessor Kymlicka
