The protection of minorities and indigenous peoples in international law: a comparative temporal analysis

It is easy to detect a sense of achievement with the extent to which the human rights regime has progressed 60 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The relative international successes suggest a bright outlook for the future of the human rights regime. However, an important lacuna remains in the attention that ought to be paid to minorities, indigenous peoples and others in vulnerable situations, including in some instances, women. This paper argues that despite the creation of sophisticated systems of international human rights law, the regimes for the protection of minority rights were stronger before the United Nations (UN) era. In support of this argument it seeks to assess regimes that existed at three different times, attempting to extrapolate and analyse the snapshots presented by these through the lens of evolving human rights law.