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Minority Rights, Jennifer Jackson Preece, Cambridge (UK) and
Malden MA: Polity Press, 2005, pp. ix, 213.This book is not, as its title might be thought to suggest, an
abstract conceptual analysis of a particular sub-set of rights. Although
it builds on, and acknowledges, the work of Kymlicka, Raz, Taylor and
Shklar (160), the narrative thread that gives it unity is historical. It
deepens our understanding of the nature of the discourse of minority
rights by contextualizing that discourse both temporally (through
historical examples) and spatially (through adroitly selected comparative
examples). With extraordinary succinctness and clarity the author guides
us through a succession of political epochs: the time of the Christian and
Islamic medieval universitae, the period of the dynastic re-organization
of Europe, the modern era of popular sovereignty with its attendant
notions of civic and ethnic nationalism, and especially the
contradiction-laden time of European imperialism and its post-imperial and
post-colonial reverberations. As this narrative unfolds we follow the
vicissitudes of religious, racial, linguistic and ethnic minorities and
observe the successive forms taken by the "problem of
minorities."

Cover; Table of Contents; Foreword: Respect and Protection of Minority Rights; Part One: Protection of Minority Rights from Perspectives of International Law and Domestic Law; Amalgamation of Different Cultures for a Harmony World Construction, In Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 30th Anniversary of China's Reform and Opening-up, Liu Hainian; On the Protection of Minority Rights: From a Perspective of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Zhu Xiaoqing.

Questions concerning minority rights has long been of international consequence and is at the center of many academic, legal and political debates. Identity claims of minority groups have been recognized and deemed worthy of protection. It is significant to note that nonetheless even today minority issues tend to occasion anxiety amongst people and States. It is therefore necessary to have jurisprudential understanding of minority rights. This will enable us to gain clarity on questions of the nature of minority rights and the various challenges revolving around them. The paper has viewed claims and rights of minorities from the stand-point of international law and human rights and in doing so has charted out the historic progression of minority rights. It further studies the present day issues of the inter-relationship between minority rights and refugees and migrants. It also examines the ever increasing demands for the inclusion of various categories like gender and children under the minority rights regime. KEYWORDS: Minority Rights, History of Minority Rights, International Law, Human Rights