SOME CONTROVERSIES IN THE DRAFTING OF THE DECLARATION: A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION Introduction It is a pleasure and an honour to speak today in the anniversary year of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (the Declaration). The organisers of the Forum were promised not so much an academic paper as a personal reflection on the drafting of the text. The author of this paper was involved in the drafting process as a representative of Minority Rights Group in the 1991 sessions of the Human Rights Commission‟s open-ended working group on the Declaration – a brief but vivid experience. I will recall the background to the Declaration, comment on the drafting of the text, reflect on where the Declaration stands twenty years on, and illustrate how concepts in the Declaration have been utilised by CERD (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination) under the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The history of minority rights reaches back to the beginnings of the system of international law. 1While the League of Nations developed a regime for the protection of „racial, religious or linguistic‟ minorities, the initial phases of the era of the UN Charter were not propitious for minority rights. The drafters of the new order drew negative conclusions from the experience of the League. The paradigm of universal human rights for all persons overshadowed the specific interests of minority groups. The early human rights regime was in large measure modernist and assimilationist, with little space allotted for the expression of diverse identities. The vocation of the early post-1945 age was for self-determination, decolonization, and nation building. Powerful sentiments favoured the simplification of identities; indigenous peoples were subject to similar attempts to „write them out of the script‟. The post-war years were also marked by the development of the system of apartheid in South Africa that presented to the world the spectacle of a dominant white minority oppressing a majority population. The concept of „prevention of discrimination‟ flourished, and led to instruments such as the Declaration and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The more limited progress of minority rights at UN level was largely represented by Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the work of the UN SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. 2 Towards the Declaration It became clear as decades passed that inattention to the claims of minorities as distinct identities within the larger context of nations and States could not be sustained. The UN General Assembly itself had adopted, on the same day as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, resolution 217C(III), which proclaimed that 1 For an overview, see P. Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 2 At its first session in 1947, the term „prevention of discrimination‟ was said to refer to „the prevention of any action which denies to individuals or groups of people equality of treatment which they may wish‟; „protection of minorities‟ was understood to mean „the protection of non-dominant groups which, while wishing in general for equality of treatment with the majority, wish for a measure of differential treatment in order to preserve basic characteristics which they possess and which distinguish them from the majority of the population‟ – E/CN.4/52, Section V. 1