6.5 Right of Minorities and Marginalized Communities

The minorities' protection — ICCPR Article 27: persons belonging to ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language — the negative-protection core and the positive-measures debate (the effective enjoyment may require the state's active measures — the HRC's reading). The specialized instruments: the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992); the FCNM (the European framework convention) as the regional model. The marginalized communities' architecture: the discrimination's intersecting grounds (caste, gender, disability, region, class); the special measures' principle (the Convention-based justification: ICERD's special measures, CEDAW's temporary special measures, CRPD's accommodation — affirmative action in international-law terms); the Dalit rights' struggle (the caste-based discrimination's elimination — ICERD's concern; Nepal's constitutional architecture: the untouchability-and-discrimination prohibition (Article 24) and the National Dalit Commission). The Nepal frame: the Constitution's inclusive architecture — the proportional-inclusion principle (Article 42's participation rights), the social justice provisions (Article 40's Dalit rights; Article 41's senior citizens; the women's, children's and minority clauses), the language-and- cultural rights (Articles 32-33) — the marginalized communities' constitutional catalogue; the implementation gap as the honest audit. Exam Focus Long questions: (i) The three generations +…