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  • Human Rights, Group Rights, and Peoples’ Rights
  • Peter Jones (bio)

Can a right borne by a group be a human right? For some analysts, the answer is obviously, “No.” 1 They argue that human rights are the rights of human beings and, self-evidently, each human being is an individual being. Groups may have rights of some sort, but, whatever those rights might be, they cannot be human rights. Human rights must be rights borne by human individuals.

Other analysts, unimpressed by that simple logic, insist that human rights can take collective as well as individual forms. 2 They argue that much [End Page 80] of what is fundamentally important to human beings relates to “goods” and “bads” that people experience collectively rather than individually: if we insist that human rights must be rights that people can hold only as independent individuals, our conception of human rights will not match the social reality of the human condition.

Among those who distinguish between group rights and human rights, a further division is discernible. For some, the reality of the conceptual difference between human rights and group rights does not betoken any antagonism between the two forms of rights. 3 Rather, they regard some group rights, such as the rights of peoples or the rights of cultural minorities, as close complements of human rights. They believe that the reasons that lead us to ascribe rights to individuals are also reasons why we should recognize certain forms of group rights: human rights may be conceptually distinct from group rights, but the two sorts of rights are united by the same underlying values and concerns.

For others, however, the distinction between group rights and human rights is of more than merely analytical significance. 4 They conceive group rights as potential threats to individual rights: group rights are often rights claimed against, or over, individuals. Traditionally, a major purpose of the [End Page 81] doctrine of human rights has been to protect individuals from the power of groups, whether or not that power is institutionalized. These theorists contend that revising the doctrine of human rights so that it incorporates group rights entails the risk of defeating that very purpose. Instead of safeguarding individuals against the predations of groups, they argue, a doctrine that legitimates those predations would result.

This article will attempt to clarify these issues by distinguishing between two conceptions of group rights. It will argue that, if one of these concep-tions were to be adopted, there is no case for absorbing group rights within, or assimilating them to, human rights. If, however, the other conception were adopted, some group rights could be conceived as human rights or, at least, as closely akin to human rights. Before embarking on that argument, the general notions of a group right and a human right, as they will be used in this article, need clarification.

I. Group Rights and Human Rights

A right is a group right only if it is borne by the group qua group. If the individuals who form a group hold rights as separate individuals, their several individual rights do not add up to a group right. For example, scientologists constitute a group whose members might be said to have a right to conduct their lives according to their beliefs (provided that, in doing so, they do not violate the rights of others). In saying that, however, we need not be ascribing a group right to scientologists. Rather, we may be saying only that individuals, including scientologists, have the right to conduct their lives as they choose. Thus, the relevant right is one held by each individual scientologist rather than by scientologists as a collectivity.

In the same way, a right may have a content that relates to a collectivity without its being a group right. An individual can have a right to join a group, such as a trade union, only if there is a group for him to join. Having joined the group, that individual may have rights that he possesses only as a member of the group. In both instances, however, these typically will be rights held in an individual capacity rather than rights that belong to the group...

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