Sovereignty And Minority Rights In Canada

A close ratiocination of the instances where there have been claims for self determination one can sufficiently claim that the right to self determination and the right of a state to its sovereignty are always at logger heads. When these two rights are pitted against each other, the quest here is for the determination of which rights supersedes the other in such scenarios. It can be referred to as a difficult balancing act. In today’s multi ethnic states there clearly have to be a balance, an acceptable equilibrium between a states sovereign power and the rights of minorities which international law has been extremely succinct about which affirms the commitment of international actors and policy makers to human dignity.
From the year 1990 to 1995 there was an attempt to strike this much needed balance between sovereignty and national minority rights by the Organization for Security in Europe and the Council for Europe. These two organizations saw the need to have national minorities given a say in the running of the affairs of the sate and they also sought to align emerging trends towards minority rights in Europe. Suffice it to say, they were faced with two options ideally, resort to more direct means of economic or military enforcement or bring about compliance with national minority rights and to them, the former seemed the most logical option . Sending peace keeping troops or imposing economic embargoes was seen as a very drastic option where there was visibly gross violations of human rights and eruptions of conflicts in states, instead there was a clear aim to prevent conflicts from reaching the point where these drastic measures would be resorted to. Their goal can be said to have been the encouragement of democratization and the respect for human and national minority rights within their area of operation.
Coming back to the era of democracy, we can see different results of the balance or equilibrium between sovereignty and minority rights. In most