Minority Rights Campaigns in the Human Rights Era.

The notion of human rights pervades international politics today, but most research on it is limited to congratulating it as an ideal or dismissing it as a smokescreen. My study aims to redirect academic attention to the political effects of human rights promotion, and determine more closely how it alters the situations and relations of groups within a target society. Of the many kinds of campaigns based in human rights ideology, my work focuses on those intending to improve the situation of an ethnic minority group within a country. Drawing upon several current cases --including the situation of Vojvodina Hungarians in Serbia; Kurds in Turkey; and Uyghurs in China, foreign-sponsored efforts to promote interethnic harmony will come under close scrutiny. Two main questions guide the research. First, how do various external actors ? be they states, interstate bodies, advocacy groups, or journalists ? shape minority leaders? demands for certain levels of autonomy and the tactics they employ to realise these demands? Does their interest in minority rights allow the leaders to be more maximalist in their aspirations ? demanding greater autonomy, or even independence-- and does it encourage violent or non-violent resistance? Second, how does external support for minorities affect the wider society? More precisely, does it spark a backlash of defensive nationalism and exacerbate interethnic tensions, or does it build inclusiveness and conviviality?This presentation will begin to answer these broad questions by considering the specific signals that organisations send to minority group leaders, and how these leaders interpret these signals when assessing their political opportunities. Using qualitative interviews with the various actors involved and discourse analysis from several case studies, the paper aims to begin assembly of a general theory of how Western human rights-based projects shape minority leaders? political activity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]