| Summary: | As several recent developments have underscored, there is an urgent need for an improved theoretical framework concerning how to accommodate population diversity within plural states in the most appropriate way. The right to identity of minorities & the right to real, substantive equality are both used to assess the existing standards & jurisprudence & also to argue for additional rights of (members of) minorities and/or a more beneficial interpretation of existing rights. A definitional chapter is followed by three chapters which analyze & evaluate the relative contribution to minority protection of, respectively, individual human rights, minority rights & the right to self-determination. It is argued that the acquis of the first category of rights, namely individual human rights, is taken up, furthered & brought closer to the goal of minority protection by the next category, namely minority rights, as the latter deals more explicitly with essential concerns of minorities & thus with their right to identity. Finally, the right to self-determination, mainly in its internal dimension, is then turned to, as it seems to take up the acquis of both individual human rights & minority rights while enhancing the protection & promotion of the right to identity of minorities. It seems justified to conclude that individual human rights, minority rights & a right to (internal) self-determination would all three be needed & would interrelate for the elaboration of an adequate system of minority protection.
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