[governance] Inputs for synthesis paper

[Sivasubramanian Muthusamy]

Hello Parminder and All,

All the heat is about the connotations of the term "collective rights". I
tried to understand the distinction between individual right and collective
right and this is what I
found:<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5357/ihr6a.html>

*Individual Rights apply to the generic individual without regard to his or
her identity.... These rights are determined with no knowledge of what our
actual economic standing, educational level, gender, or ethnic origin would
be. Most international and national formulations of human rights are drafted
in such a way as to apply to a generic individual.*

*Collective rights, however, do not start with the individual but rather
with a specific group. Individuals are defined by their membership in that
group, which thus differentiates them from others in society. Some
collectives are formed by choice (religious affiliation in the United
States, for example). Others are predetermined (the traditional
understanding of gender, for example). Collective rights begin with the
premise that the group has a claim to make. Historically, we can see
numerous examples of group treatment (generally negative). In the Roman
Empire, for example, Jews possessed the status of a religio licita, and as
such enjoyed specific rights as Jews--the right not to work on the Sabbath,
or to recognize the divinity of the Emperor. Such rights were granted to the
Jewish collective and thus to the individual Jew of the Empire by virtue of
being Jewish and thus distinct from Greeks or Syrians or Celts in the
Empire. The Ottoman Empire was governed under the millet system, by which
each group in the Empire was defined via their religious community. Thus,
people living in the same town but belonging to different faiths had
different rights and obligations on account of their group membership. A
vague notion of collective rights also lay behind the concept of
extra-territoriality, that people, by virtue of their citizenship, in
foreign lands should be governed, not by local law, but by the laws of their
originating state. ---- from a Lecture of Dr. Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Editor of
**The National Interest and a Senior Fellow in Strategic Studies at The
Nixon Center.*

Internet Governance Caucus can propose Collective Rights if we would like to
see different bandwidth plans for men and women, priority access for
"backward and "most backward" classes as invented in India,  publishing
space discrimination between different churches, and free DVD movies for
those who live in mountains.

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy.

India.

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 10:41 PM, Tapani Tarvainen <tapani.tarvainen at effi.org
> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 10:02:20PM +0530, Parminder (
> parminder at itforchange.net) wrote:
>
> > 'Collective rights' is obviously an analytical category and not a right
> as
> > such. So when I speak of collective rights I am clearly meaning specific
> > rights like rights of indigenous people, linguistic rights, cultural
> rights,
> > minority rights, right to development etc.
>
> > To say that one doesn't believe in collective rights one must be able to
> say
> > that one doesn't believe in the above rights.
>
> It does not follow if one does not agree that those rights are collective.
>
> I suspect one or maybe the key problem here is that the term indeed
> carries different meanings, and people want to reject some of them.
>
> In particular, probably few (?) people would oppose collective
> rights as justification of individual rights - rights individuals
> would have because of their membership in a group.
> The opposition stems from the other meaning, where collective
> rights would justify depriving individuals of their rights.
>
> > In fact I am fine if one is ready to accept a long list of all these
> rights,
> > and not mention the terms negative, positive and collective rights. That
> > merely would mean one thinks all these rights, along with those that may
> be
> > considered negative and positive rights are in the same category, and
> need
> > not be differentiated. I could in fact be happier with such a position.
>
> That might be a useful approach.
>
> --
> Tapani Tarvainen
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-- 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasubramanianmuthusamy
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