Minority Rights Group International

Minority Rights Group International

Type	Non-governmental organization
Founded	1960s
Location	London, United Kingdom
Area served	Worldwide
Focus	Minority rights Indigenous rights
Website	minorityrights.org

Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is an organisation founded with the objective of promoting respect for the human rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples around the world. Their headquarters are in London, with offices in Budapest and Kampala.

The organisation was set up in the 1960s by a group of activists and academics "who feel a special concern that the rights of minorities to preserve and develop their cultural integrity are being infringed in many countries ... the MRG has been established to protect the rights of minorities to co-exist with majorities, by objective study and consistent international public exposure of violations of fundamental rights as defined by the UN Charter"^[1]. Its first director was Laurence Gandar, a prominent newspaper editor and anti-apartheid campaigner from South Africa.

MRG's work

MRG uses a campaigning approach, which includes advocacy, media work, legal cases, research, publishing and providing training for civil society groups that work with minorities and indigenous peoples. MRG is an accredited non-governmental organisation with the United Nations and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. It works closely with around 150 partner organisations around the world, who advocate on behalf of minorities and indigenous communities.

MRG produces a regularly updated online resource, the World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, which provides profiles of minority communities in every country of the world. It also publishes an annual report, the State of the World's Minorities, and an annual index, Peoples Under Threat, which ranks countries according to the degree of physical danger facing minorities.

Some Recent publications

• Still Targeted: Continued Persecution of Iraq's Minorities (June 2010)

• Uncounted: the hidden lives of Batwa women (in English and French) (May 2010)

• Discrimination and political participation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (March 2010)

• Breaking the cycle of Exclusion: Minority rights in Georgia today (December 2009)

• Resolving conflicts using traditional mechanisms in the Karamoja and Teso regions of Uganda (August 2009)

• State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009 (July 2009)

• Filling the Vacuum: Ensuring Protection and Legal Remedies for Minorities in Kosovo (May 2009)

• Forgotten or Assimilated? Minorities in the Education System of Turkey (March 2009) (in English and Turkish)

• A Double Bind: The Exclusion of Pastoralist Women in the East and Horn of Africa (December 2008)

• Protecting the rights of minorities in Africa: A guide for human rights activists and civil society organizations (December 2008)

• The Right to Learn: Batwa Education in the Great Lakes Region of Africa (December 2008) (in English and French)

• African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights: Ten years on and still no justice (September 2008)

• Pushing for Change? South East Europe's Minorities in the EU Progress Reports (July 2008)

• Why a minority rights approach to conflict? The case of Southern Sudan (April 2008) (in English and Arabic)

• One year on: counter-terrorism sparks human rights crisis for Sri Lanka's minorities (December 2007)

• A Quest for Equality: Minorities in Turkey (December 2007)

See also

Genocide portal

• Genocide
• Global Human Rights Defence
• Minority group

References

1. ^ Founding statement of aims, Minority Rights Group

• Barzilai, Gad. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). ISBN 978-0-472-03079-8

External links

• Minority Rights Group International - Official website