Guidelines to Assist National Minority Participation in the Electoral Process Page: 13 commitment to the values contained in those provisions, but also to give security to the beneficiaries of those provisions. VI. • Entrenchment may take several forms. In this respect, a standard mechanism is to require enhanced voting thresholds in the legislature. Other mechanisms may require a special procedure to be followed requiring engagement with all relevant stakeholders or the majority support of each of the subsidiary legislatures in a federal system of government. • The use of a referendum or plebiscite may also be prescribed and utilised in cases involving rights issues. LUND RECOMMENDATION ON ELECTIONS: No. 8 “The regulation of the formation and activity of political parties shall comply with the international law principle of freedom of association. This principle includes the freedom to establish political parties based on communal identities as well as those not identified exclusively with the interest of a specific community.” A. CONTENT EXPLANATION The first sentence of this recommendation is normative. States must comply with the international principle of freedom of association. That principle is to be found expressed in the following international standards: - - - Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Article 2 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities specifically states that persons belonging to these minorities have the right to establish and maintain: ! their own associations; and ! contact with other members of their group even if they are citizens of another State; Article 11 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; Article 7 of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ETS No. 157, 1995) states that parties shall ensure respect for the right of every person belonging to a national minority to freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association, freedom of expression, and freedom of thought, conscience and religion; Paragraph 7.6 of the OSCE’s Copenhagen Document: “respect the right of individuals and groups to establish, in full freedom, their own political parties or other political organizations and provide such political parties and organizations with the necessary legal guarantees to enable them to compete with each other on a basis of equal treatment before the law and by the authorities”; The international principle contemplates that individuals are free: - to associate with any person whether a citizen, resident, refugee or foreigner; - to form an association; - to determine the purpose, defining characteristics and internal rules of the association; and - to decide, on a non-discriminatory basis, who may join or who may not join the association.20 20 The State is obliged, particularly on the basis of Article 2D and Article 5 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, to prohibit members of majorities to exclude persons belonging to national minorities from taking part in associations set up by