Minorities under Siege: Postcolonial and Decolonial Perspectives

“Minorities under siege: postcolonial and decolonial perspectives” is the topic of this year’s Annual Minority Rights Lecture.

The lecture will be delivered by Mohammad Shahabuddin, Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Birmingham Law School. He is renowned for his postcolonial approach particularly in regard to minority issues, ethnicity and nationalism.

The lecture will be held as part of this year’s edition of the IPSA Research CommitteesColloquium “Minorities under siege? Plural Societies Facing Plural Challenges,” hosted by Eurac Research’s Institute for Minority Rights and the Center for Autonomy Experience.

Program

5.15-7.15 p.m.
Welcome address: Andrea Carlà, Institute for Minority Rights, Eurac Research

Speaker: Mohammad Shahabuddin, Birmingham Law School

Moderator: Timofey Agarin, Queen’s University Belfast

The UN estimates that 10 to 20 percent of the world’s population belong to minorities, which means that according to the OHCHR, UN Guide for Minorities, a vast number of people are in need of special measures for the protection of their rights. Minorities, even as a large portion of global population, are exposed to risks in which they often experience intense political, economic, and cultural pressure exerted by dominant majorities in their own states.

The Annual Minority Rights lecture examines the proposition of minorities under siege through postcolonial, economic, and conceptual lenses. Together, these three dimensions highlight how postcoloniality, as a phenomenon, transcends postcolonial states and continues to shape majority-minority relations on a global scale.

This is especially evident in the very conceptualization of the minority as a manifestation of hegemonic power relations. Viewed in this way, the postcolonial siege of the minority provides a useful normative framework for understanding the precarious position of minorities even within advanced Western democracies.

Against this backdrop, the lecture also offers insights on how contemporary discourses on minority rights might be decolonized.

Language: English

Event website: https://www.eurac.edu/en/events/institute-for-minority-rights/minorities-under-siege-postcolonial-and-decolonial-perspectives