Democracy as Conflict Prevention.

• Author: Singh, Anita Inder
• Position: United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities

In 1992, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities broke new ground by suggesting that States should try to accommodate their ethnically diverse populations through democratic governance. The preamble to the Declaration counselled that the promotion and realization of minority rights within "a democratic framework based on the rule of law would contribute to the strengthening of friendship and cooperation among peoples and States".

Little noticed, this unprecedented advice goes against a common assumption that nationalism inevitably leads to war and disorder. And it points to the failure of authoritarian States to manage ethnic diversity: indeed, to raise just one question-how often has nationalism contributed to the breakup of empires? Almost a decade later, despite the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Central Africa, and the fact that threats to the survival of many States emanated from domestic causes, I take the view that the Declaration's advocacy of democracy to manage ethnic diversity holds good. The causes of the conflicts that occurred, as well as the absence of war in most multi-ethnic post-communist countries, bear this out.

Ethnic conflict usually has its origins in discrimination against minorities, attempts at assimilation, and sometimes even genocide. Exclusivist nationalist leaders mobilize support on a platform of ethnic intolerance in order to seek to win and/or maintain power-in short, to build or preserve nation-States in the literal sense by aligning ethnicity and territory. It is not merely that the identities of minorities are threatened, it is their very survival. It is then that minorities tend to resort to force to carve out their own homeland, in effect to change the borders of the States in which they are living. It is precisely to prevent this from happening that the Declaration counsels States to protect the identities of minorities within their respective territories and to encourage conditions for the promotion of their identity, thereby adopting legislative and other measures to achieve those ends. The Declaration also advocates giving minorities the right to enjoy their own culture, use their own language, and form their own associations.

The intellectual and political pluralism inherent in democracy goes against the assimilationist logic of the nation-State. It refutes the inbuilt assumption of the nation-State that there...