PART THREE: PROTECTING MINORITY RIGHTS The rights in article 27 are further elaborated in the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 47/135 of 18 December 1992. In the Declaration, the General Assembly reaffirms, inter alia, that: “Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities … have the right to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, and to use their own language, in private and in public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination.”852 It further affirms the rights of minorities “to participate effectively in cultural, religious, social, economic and public life”; “to participate effectively in decisions on the national and, where appropriate, regional level concerning the minority to which they belong or the regions in which they live”; and “to establish and maintain their own associations”; as well as several other guarantees, particularly in a cross-border context.853 PART THREE While these rights are distinct from the right to non-discrimination, their realization nonetheless relies upon comprehensive and effective protection from discrimination. States must ensure that laws, policies and practices do not discriminate, directly or indirectly, against ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities exercising their culture; transmitting, honouring and publicly memorializing their history; professing their religion or belief in community with others; or using their language in community with others. Similarly, States must ensure effective protection from discrimination by private actors that would interfere with the exercise and enjoyment of these rights.854 This said, the realization of minority rights can – in practice – be in tension with the rights of persons within and outside the minority community to non-discrimination. In various countries and contexts, legislators have struggled to appropriately balance minority rights and related guarantees, on the one hand, with the right to non-discrimination, on the other. One such area concerns States’ obligations to eliminate genderbased discrimination and realize the rights of minority communities. A number of other legal questions have also arisen, including as concerns attempts to justify discrimination by reference to the religious or cultural beliefs of the discriminating party. Some of these questions have been expressed as the contrasting possibilities available to States for demands to be included, as opposed to requests to “opt out” from inclusive systems.855 The United Nations treaty bodies have consistently recognized that measures taken for the realization of minority rights cannot result in discrimination against women or girls, or on other grounds.856 Even so, some genuine tensions remain. For example, as noted below, the meaning of equal access to education in a minority language context is not fully settled. One core issue concerns who is protected in these two neighbouring legal regimes. Minority rights – aligned with other aspects of international human rights law – guarantee that a person has a right of personal selfidentification and self-determination. Anti-discrimination law, by contrast, is agnostic as to the identity of the person concerned, as evidenced above in the section on discrimination based on association and perception. To illustrate the point: the first case adjudicated under the strengthened hate crime provisions of 1996 in Hungary concerned neo-Nazis who beat up a man who announced himself to them as Jewish, after he heard them shouting antisemitic slogans.857 The victim was in fact not Jewish, and had only claimed to be Jewish in order to express his opposition to the racist views expressed. The Hungarian authorities prosecuted the perpetrators for bias-motivated criminal acts and – correctly – did not probe the question of the identity of the victim. The question at issue was not the identity of the victim, but rather the perception of the perpetrators that he was Jewish. This section of the present guide examines some of these questions that arise at the intersection of the right to non-discrimination and the rights of minorities. It is not intended as a comprehensive exploration of all 852 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, art. 2. 853 Ibid. 854 See further section I.A.3 of part two of the present guide. 855 Ayelet Shachar, Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights (Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2001). 856 See, for example, Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 28 (2000), para. 32; and Human Rights Committee, Lovelace v. Canada, communication No. 24/1977. 857 Nemzeti és Etnikai Kisebbségi Jogvédő Iroda (NEKI), Tamas H. Case 1997, https://www.neki.hu/archivum-feher-fuzet/, also summarized at: https://magyarnarancs.hu/belpol/perek_szelsojobboldaliak_ellen_itelet_is_meg_nem_is-61981?fbclid=IwAR2kxIEkPDVj_syl5_ ulZRU8utBPKJy1gwh1rMJ6CxnAxylbvCAjoxDu8YE. 125