ABSTRACT
The somewhat awkward title of this chapter reflects the difficulties which individual governments and the world community have had in defining the rights of a particular class of people; that is, those who belong to groups which are distinguished from the rest of society by characteristics such as language, religion, ethnicity and culture. Unlike human rights, which belong to all individuals, or inherently collective rights (such as the right of peoples to self-determination or of states to diplomatic immunity or freedom of the high seas), the rights of minorities1 apply only to some individuals who happen to belong to a particular kind of group known as a 'minority'.
