Protection of Individual Minority Rights in the UN Global Sustainable Development Goals

Minorities falling under the Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil, Cultural and Political rights, that is, individuals belonging to national, ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities possess characteristics that form part of their identity and differ from the characteristics possessed by the majority population of the state. Because of these particularities, minorities can be often considered to be directly or indirectly discriminated against and to stand in unequal position in relation to majority groups in what comes to a distribution of benefits in the society. This is also the case in regard development programs. Therefore, the needs of the minorities would require special attention in the development programs in order to better protect minority rights. This master thesis examines how minority rights are considered in the UN global development goal processes and attempts to find out to what extent the designing process and the content of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have taken into account the protection of individual minority rights. This thesis provides an overview of the protection of the minority rights in the SDGs by using the tool known as the Human Rights-Based Approach to Development and uses the Millenium Development Goals as a comparison to provide a comprehensive answer to the issue.