Minority Rights, Identity Politics and Gender in Bangladesh: Current Problems and Issues

The first 200 words of this essay...

Minority Rights, Identity Politics and Gender in Bangladesh: Current Problems and Issues

Introduction

Minorities have been variously defined in international forums. First the following definition was constructed prior to the Sub-commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in 1977 to Article 27 of International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (16 Dec. 1966)

Minorities were considered to be a group numerically inferior to the rest of the population of the state, in a non-dominant position, whose members being citizens of a state, possess ethnic beliefs or linguistic characteristics differing from the rest of the population and show if only implicitly, a sense of solidarity directly towards preserving their culture, traditions, religions or language. (Capotorti, 1991, 96)

In Article 11 of the UN Declaration on Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic religious and Linguistic Minorities 18 Dec. 1992, it is stated that states should protect the existence of national or ethnic, cultural or religiously defined identity of minorities within their respective territory. Under certain circumstances foreigners can come within the range of this definition.

According to the first definition protection of minorities are linked to citizenship. Here the criterion of citizenship