A/74/160 holders, often associated with the concept of traditional or national minorities, but entitled to more extensive, deeper protective rights. To this of course must be added the not inconsiderable number of States that are not particularly sympathetic to any recognition of rights for minorities beyond general individualistic human rights standards, or that even deny the existence of any linguistic, religious or ethnic minority within their borders. These competing perceptions and concerns still exist to some degree today, though in a sense the jurisprudential clarifications in the interpretation of article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by the Human Rights Committee and an interpretation of the wording of this provision in conformity with international law under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties converge on a fairly clear and unambiguous result. 5. The contours of who is a minority: the choices made in the drafting of article 27 of the International Covenant 41. As a general rule of interpretation, the word “minority” must be given its ordinary meaning in its “context and in the light of its object and purpose” and a “special meaning shall be given to a term if it is established that the parties so intended”. 11 The extensive debates and absence of agreement demonstrate that there is no “special meaning” of the term that can be extrapolated from the numerous proposed definitions and descriptions, or in the extensive debates and draft proposals in the travaux préparatoires to what would eventually become article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 12 42. The wording of article 27 is very significant, however, in that it represents a departure from some of the restrictions and limitations o f many of the earlier definitions and descriptions of who is to be considered a minority, and also changes significantly the nature and extent of the rights they can claim. As for the former, the provision itself discards the concept of “national minority” so frequently evoked in European contexts and history. 43. From the onset, it may be useful to emphasize that the term “minority” has no meaning unless associated with some marker: individuals of a different gender, or with different political ideologies or different sexual orientations, can be a minority. Even individuals with blue eyes could claim to be a “minority” where a majority of people have brown eyes. The ordinary meaning of the term “minority” is usually a numerical one – in most languages at least, unless otherwise indicated. 13 44. It is therefore misleading and unhelpful, in trying to define who is a minority, to refer to the term in isolation. Setting aside all the debates, disagreements and dissent at the time of the drafting of this provisio n, the starting point in identifying the meaning of a minority under this human rights treaty is to consider the plain meaning of the terms used. This initial step provides a first indication of the “choices made”, in that the wording of article 27 of the Covenant moves significantly away __________________ 11 12 13 14/19 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, art. 31. Though focused on linguistic minorities, a detailed and informative outline of the various proposals and discussions on the issue of how to define a minority can be found in Alexandre Duchêne, Ideologies across Nations: The Construction of Linguistic Minorities at the United Nations (Language, Power and Social Progress) (Berlin and New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008), in particular pp. 171–180 and 218–229. See, for example, the definition of “minority” in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary: 1. The smaller part of a group; less than half of the people or things in a large group; 2. A small group within a community or country that is different because of race, religion, language, etc. The rights of ethnic/racial minorities Minority languages A large German-speaking minority in the east of the country. 19-11967