ETHNIC COHESION AND

SOCIAL HARMONY
WHAT ARE ”RIGHTS" AND
THEIR IMPORTANCE?
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR
UPHOLDING HUMAN RIGHTS

Under human rights treaties, governments have the primary

responsibility for protecting and promoting human rights. However,
governments are not solely responsible for ensuring human rights.
Even businesses, civil society, and individuals are responsible for
promoting and respecting human rights.
When a government ratifies a human rights treaty, it assumes a
legal obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights contained
in the treaty.
Governments are obligated to make sure that human rights are
protected by both preventing human rights violations against
people within their territories and providing effective remedies for
those whose rights are violated.
HOW DOES INTERNATIONAL LAW PROTECT HUMAN
RIGHTS ?
International human rights law lays down obligations which States are bound to
respect.
By becoming parties to international treaties, States assume obligations and
duties under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfil human rights.
The obligation to respect means that States must refrain from interfering with or
curtailing the enjoyment of human rights. e.g: Create constitutional guarantees of
human rights; provide ways for people who have suffered human rights violations
by the government to seek legal remedies from domestic and international courts;
sign international human rights treaties.
The obligation to protect requires States to protect individuals and groups against
human rights abuses. e.g: Prosecute perpetrators of human rights abuses, such as
crimes of domestic violence; Educate people about human rights and the
importance of respecting the human rights of others; Cooperate with the
international community in preventing and prosecuting crimes against humanity and
other violations.
The obligation to fulfil means that States must take positive action to facilitate the
enjoyment of basic human rights. e.g: Provide free, high-quality public education;
Create a public defender system so that everyone has access to a lawyer; Ensure
everyone has access to food by funding public assistance programs; Fund a public
education campaign on the right to vote.
Through ratification of international human rights treaties,
Governments undertake to put into place domestic
measures and legislation compatible with their treaty
obligations and duties.
The domestic legal system, therefore, provides the
principal legal protection of human rights guaranteed
under international law.
If domestic legal proceedings fail to address human
rights abuses, mechanisms and procedures for individual
and group complaints are available at the regional and
international levels to help ensure that international
human rights standards are indeed respected,
implemented, and enforced at the local level.
(From UN)
 HOW DO RIGHTS BECOME LAW
International human rights law is contained in many different types of
documents, including treaties and charters.
The human rights treaty process usually begins at the United Nations or a
similar international body. Legal and subject matter experts might first create a
draft of the treaty.
After the draft is written, the UN or other body will arrange a meeting between
representatives of interested countries to negotiate the final terms, or content,
of the treaty. This can be a lengthy process.
Non-governmental organizations are sometimes allowed to offer
recommendations during some of the stages of the drafting process.
After the negotiating countries agree on a final text of the treaty, the treaty is
opened for ratification by countries that want to become parties to it.
Through ratification, a country agrees to be legally bound by the terms of the
treaty.
Countries that ratify treaties are allowed to enter reservations to those
instruments. Reservations are statements made by a country that “modify the
legal effect of certain provisions of the treaty.” Entering a reservation allows
a government to agree to most of a treaty, while excluding or limiting parts
that might be controversial or unconstitutional in its own country.
Many countries have entered reservations to the major human rights treaties,
which can limit the effectiveness of the treaties in protecting people against
abuses committed by their governments.
In countries with a monist approach international law directly becomes
applicable domestically. However , in countries like ours which have dualist
approaches the ratification itself isn’t enough. Laws need to be passed
domestically though another process for international law to be applicable
domestically.
Fundamental rights is a domestic application of human rights. When Human
rights are recognized by a constitution in a country they become fundamental
rights and the governments are legally bound to implement them. If a citizens
fundamental rights are violated or not protected he/she can take action against
the state authority.
 CITIZENSHIP AND
POLITICAL RIGHTS IN A
DIVERSE SOCIETY
Citizenship as a Legal Status
Liberal Theory of Citizenship
 Social Citizenship
 Differentiated Citizenship
 Multi-cultural Citizenship

Citizenship and Political Agency

Citizenship in Diverse Societies
Citizenship and Gender
Citizenship and Political Emancipation
Citizenship and Minorities
Nation-state, Minorities and Citizenship
‘Citizen’ and ‘citizenship’ are concepts that figure in our everyday thought and
conversations.

We generally understand by the term citizen as a person who is a member of a

state. e.g: A Sri Lankan citizen is a member of the Sri Lankan state.

‘Citizen’ is often contrasted with ‘subject.’

‘Subject/s’- refer to the people of a country belonged to the pre-modern and
pre-democratic times of feudal and monarchical rule. Kings and queens in pre-
modern times considered people living in the kingdom as his/her subjects.’
People also thought that they were ‘subjects.’ Subjects in this pre-modern sense
did not have rights as the citizens do today. The ruler had the total authority
over the life, property and freedom of individuals living within the kingdom.
Citizens in the modern world are not subjects; they are ‘rights bearing citizens.’
Aristotle in the Politics discussed the idea of citizenship. According to him a
citizen is “he who has the power to take part in the deliberative judicial
administration of any state.” A state, Aristotle further claimed, “is a body of
citizens” satisfying the purposes of life. In the Greek city-states, citizenship was
a privilege confined to a minority in society; they were wealthy and educated
men.
The modern concept of citizenship has evolved in the context of the democratic
revolution from the 17th century onwards. It first evolved in Europe.
It became established in Asian, African and Latin American societies during the
mid 20th century. Therefore, the idea of citizenship in many of the countries in
the non-Western societies is also relatively new.
CITIZENSHIP AS A LEGAL STATUS
Citizenship is a ‘legal status’ one gets by being a member of a state. If you are a
citizen of Sri Lanka, you have a legal status as a citizen of Sri Lanka.

It is this legal status that offers you certain rights entitled to other citizens.

By having that legal status of a citizen, a person can claim rights as a citizen.

In every state, there is a law of citizenship that governs the legal status of
citizenship.

The most important rights that the legal status of citizenship offers a citizen is
security and protection. The state has a duty to protect its citizens and the citizens
have a legal right to expect protection from the state.
 LIBERAL THEORY OF CITIZENSHIP
In the liberal understanding, citizenship is primarily a legal status which offers individuals
political and civil rights to be free citizens within a political community.

The liberal theory of citizenship has three components:

(i) Citizenship is a specific relationship with the state that individuals possess.
(ii) Being a member of a state with legal status to citizenship.
(iii) That protection of the state citizens enjoy is a legal right.

This legal definition of citizenship has shortcomings as well. Its main weakness is that it
assumes that all individuals have equal access to rights on the basis of the legal status of
citizenship.

When a society has many inequalities, based on social class, caste, gender, ethnicity,
physical and mental abilities etc., the state does not treat all citizens equally.

There are three concepts of citizenship that addresses this shortcoming of the
conventional, legal definition of citizenship. They are:
(a) social citizenship,
(b) differentiated citizenship, and
(c) multi-cultural citizenship.
 SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP
• The concept of social citizenship was advanced by T. H. Marshall, a British sociologist, in 1949.

Marshal theory begins with accepting the basic definition of citizenship, offered by liberal political theory,
and then goes beyond it.

Accordingly, citizenship is “a status bestowed upon those who are full members of a community. All those
who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed.”

What is new in Marshall’s approach is that this status and rights of citizenship has three other dimensions
namely:
(a) civil: the civil rights to which citizens are entitled. It includes individual freedoms and rights such as
freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of thought and conscience, and the right to own
property.
(b) political: the right to take part in the political process as a voter, member of a political party, and
as a person with the right to contest elections to get elected to parliament other legislative bodies. To
guarantee the ‘political’ dimension of citizenship there should be universal adult franchise,
representative democracy, and political equality.
(c) social: the right of citizens to enjoy equal social rights such as social security, employment, housing
and education etc., that enables citizens to enjoy social protection.
Without social rights, civil and political rights do not guarantee full
citizenship.
For citizenship to be fully meaningful, it should offer citizens all these
three aspects of citizenship rights.

Marshall’s theory became known as ‘social citizenship theory’ as it

emphasized on social rights that citizenship should bestow on citizens.
Liberal capitalism offered citizens civil and political rights, but not
social rights to enjoy social protection.

In England, that problem of social inequalities was overcome by means

of social welfarism. Thus, the welfare state was the instrument that
guaranteed social citizenship.
DIFFERENTIATED CITIZENSHIP
This concept of citizenship critiques both the liberal and social citizenship and
offers an alternative.
It critiques the assumption of ‘common citizenship’ associated with the traditional
approach to citizenship and argues that the citizenship theory should take into
account ethnic, cultural, gender and other differentiations that defines citizens
and shapes their access to rights and freedoms.
All citizens, even though they have equal legal rights to citizenship, do not equally
enjoy those rights. What happens is that although they are citizens with legal right
to equality, they suffer discrimination through oppressions, marginalization and
other forms of denial of basic human rights.
The concept of ‘differentiated citizenship was formed to address this question of
discrimination of some citizens based on multiple inequalities. Its basic proposals are:
-Legal citizenship offers only formal citizenship rights to individuals which does not
guarantee that those who are subjected to discrimination have actual right to enjoy
citizenship rights.
-Citizens are not equal. Discrimination based on differentiations cannot be
addressed through the concept of common citizenship.
-The concept of differentiated citizenship proposes differentiated citizenship rights to
overcome discrimination. Those who suffer discrimination need special rights, not
common rights, to enjoy a status of equality.

Many countries in the world have accepted the concept of differentiated citizenship and
have taken steps to implement policies to overcome discrimination. some examples are:
 Positive discrimination policies in India that gives special educational and employment
rights to citizens of certain marginalized caste and tribal communities.
 Affirmative action policies in America to enable black citizens and women in education
and employment.
 Special policies to ensure rights of women, elderly, differently able citizens, migrant
workers etc.
MULTI-CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP
The theory of ‘multi-cultural citizenship tries to address the question, How should
a concept of citizenship accommodate cultural diversity?
This theory of citizenship emerged in Canada during the 1980s. Will Kymlicka,
a Canadian political theorist, is credited with developing it conceptually.
Canada is a multicultural country.
Kymlicka identified that Individual citizens belonging to minority groups suffer
discrimination because they belong to minority groups, not merely because they
are individuals.
Therefore, Kymilicka revised the liberal theory of citizenship by bringing groups
rights approach to the liberal theory of citizenship.
The concept of multi-cultural citizenship acknowledges group rights. That is not
rights applicable to individuals, but cultural communities as groups. A group-
rights based the theory of citizenship.
CITIZENSHIP AND POLITICAL AGENCY
‘Agency’ in social theory refers to human beings who think and act either as
individuals or groups in social and political processes.

citizenship offers individuals political agency. That is the rights to think and act
politically. Acting politically is a right of the citizen in a modern democratic
state.

While the citizens have a right to act politically, the state has a duty to protect
the right of the citizens to act politically. Thus, the agency of the citizen is
protected by the democratic state.

There are two approaches to the citizen’s political agency. They are liberal and
republican theories.
The liberal theory of citizenship does not expect the citizen to play an active
political role in society, other than voting at elections, becoming a member of a
political party or a political club, attending political meetings, and getting
interested in political affairs. This is a minimalist concept of political agency.

The liberal theory of citizenship offers this minimalist approach to citizens’ political
agency, because in a democratic state, as assumed in the liberal theory, the state
protects citizens’ rights and freedoms.

The Republican theory of citizenship accords the citizen with an active role. A
tradition goes as far back as to the classical Greek political thought of Aristotle.
The Republican theory expects the citizen to actively take part in politics. In modern
representative democracies, citizen’s active role expected by the republican
political theory is political activism, to defend freedom and rights.

That activism involves more than voting or being members of political parties or
clubs, as assumed in the liberal theory. Taking part in protests, critiquing the
government’s behaviour and decision that affect freedom, being alert to the
possibility of the governmental power being used in a tyrannical manner and
resisting it are examples of such political activism. Thus, the Republican theory of
citizenship has advanced a concept of active political agency.
CITIZENSHIP IN DIVERSE SOCIETIES
Almost all our societies are diverse. This diversity emanates from social,
cultural, linguistic, gender, and other differences.
Although pluralism of societies has been a historical fact, it is only recently,
during the last few decades of the twentieth century, that pluralism began to be
acknowledge as a key theme in relation to the state, democracy and citizenship.
Diversity, as opposed to homogeneity, of citizenship is an important
development in the theories of citizenship developed during the 1990s. The
concept of multicultural citizenship, is the most important development in the
theory of citizenship, in response to the recognition of cultural and ethnic
diversity.
The key ideas of this new approach to citizenship in diverse societies are as
follows:
(i) Because of ethnic and cultural diversity of societies, political power tends to
be distributed unequally among these communities and it has often led to
majority-minority divisions. Even in democracies, political power has tended to
be concentrated in the hands of the majority ethnic and cultural communities.
This leads to discrimination against minority communities. Such discrimination
undermines the principle of equality among citizens.
(ii) When diversity is recognized as a constitutive feature of plural societies,
more democratic ways of conceptualizing citizenship becomes possible.
Protection of minority rights, women’s rights etc., by the state should be the goal
of such re-conceptualizing of citizenship.
(iii) Democracy in diverse, plural and multi-cultural societies calls for ‘inclusive
citizenship.’ Inclusive citizenship is an approach to citizenship in which no
community of citizens is excluded from enjoying the rights and entitlements
available by being members of a political community.
CITIZENSHIP AND GENDER
With the feminist movement’s intervention in challenging the conventional approach to politics;
the last few decades of the past century saw the expansion of the idea of citizenship by
bringing gender as a factor to define citizenship.
From the classical Greek days onwards, politics was seen by all political philosophers and
thinkers as a male vocation. Women were excluded from politics, politics being
conceptualized as the activity in the ‘public domain.’ Thus, the world of women was the
‘private domain’, which is the family and the household.
Feminists in the 1970s and 1980 developed a sharp critique of this mail-centric idea of
politics, which has remained unquestioned for over two thousand years.
Kate Millet’s book, Sexual Politics focus on two major points in the feminist critique of the
traditional concept of citizenship. They are:
(i) The traditional political theory of citizenship was ‘gender blind.’ It did not see the
differentiation of society into men and women, extension of that differentiation in to all
spheres of social, economic, cultural life, etc. Further this conception had no concept of gender
- based inequalities.
(ii) The traditional theory of citizenship excluded women from the domain of citizenship and
political rights. Accordingly, a citizen was essentially a male person. Only member could claim
and secure member ship of the state, or the political community.
Arising from these critical perspectives, feminists argued that there cannot, and should not, be
a universal and uniform theory of citizenship and that there should be a new theory of
citizenship based on gender.
In the feminist alternative thinking, three feminist approaches to citizenship have
emerged.
(i).Gender-neutral citizenship. This approach emerged within the liberal
feminist tradition. Its main point was that women should be given full citizenship
rights on the basis of gender equality.
(ii) Gender differentiated citizenship. This approach was developed as a
critique of the gender- neutral citizenship theory. It argued that differences
between men and women are actually real and therefore a feminist theory of
citizenship should be based on the recognition of gender differentiation in
society. It also denies the traditional view that there can be a universal theory
of citizenship.
(iii) Gender pluralist citizenship. Influenced by the post-modern social theory,
this approach denies that women are a homogenous category. Women, instead,
are differentiated in terms of race, skin colour, social class, education,
profession, sexual orientation and European or non-European etc. Therefore, a
theory of citizenship for all women is not correct. Instead, any theory of
citizenship for women should account for these internal differentiations among
women.
CITIZENSHIP AND POLITICAL EMANCIPATION
Freedom from historical forms of domination and oppression has been
conceptualized as political emancipation.

In the contemporary world, domination and oppression takes place at various

levels. In non-democratic, authoritarian political systems, citizens are dominated
by ruling classes who maintain their power and domination over society by
arbitrary and oppressive means. In such instances, citizens do not enjoy full
citizenship rights.

Individual and political freedoms are either restricted or denied by the all-
powerful state. In many such societies, citizenship does not entail civil and
political rights.

To realize full citizenship, citizens are compelled to struggle and fight for
political emancipation. A contemporary example from a recent political
struggles is the Arab Spring.
CITIZENSHIP AND MINORITIES
In our common sense as well as social scientific usage, the word ‘minorities’ has
two meanings.
 Minorities as the numerically lesser segments within a group, or a
population, in contrast to the numerical majority.
 A minority as a social group with no power, although in some
circumstances they may be the numerical majority. Women are the
example of this definition of a minority.

The demographic category of ‘minorities’ is not a politically neutral one. The

moment a group, or a population, is divided into a majority and minorities; it
suggests power relations, the majority having more power and the minority with
no or less power. This may also lead to instances where the majority has a
tendency to suppress the view of the minority. In the contemporary world this
has become a serious problem in democracy when it is understood as the ‘will
of the majority.’
When minorities experience discrimination, their sense of belonging to the nation as well
as the state becomes fragile, because as a result of discrimination they do not enjoy full
citizenship rights. Therefore, in multi-ethnic societies, nation-building process requires
strengthening the sense belonging among minorities through granting them full citizenship
rights.
Full citizenship rights to ethnic and cultural minorities include three types of rights. They
are:
 (i). Individual rights, guaranteed to all citizens under democracy and rule of law.
 (ii). Group-specific cultural rights such as language and religious rights and rights
pertaining to their cultural heritage.
 (iii). Group-specific political rights such as decentralization, adequate political
representation, devolution, regional autonomy, power sharing and socio-economic
development.

Other than the ethnic minorities there are also Social minorities, in states. They too face
many challenges in relation to their citizenship rights as a result of the conditions of
marginalization, discrimination and oppression. These conditions have in turn lead to
social exclusion which is define as denial to individuals equal opportunities in economic,
social, educational, cultural and political life, resulting in poverty, lack of freedom and
multiple forms of deprivation. In almost all South Asian societies, depressed caste
communities continue to suffer social exclusion, which rooted in the history as well social
structures.