Documents on Autonomy and Minority Rights

Multiculturalism and Minority Rights: West and East

Autonomy and rights: dignity and right.

Personal Identity, Individual Autonomy and Group Rights

It is a commonplace in liberal circles that individual persons have a right to individual autonomy or self-determination. Each mentally competent adult has a right to be at liberty to live and shape their own life in accordance with their own view about what makes for a good life, free from undue coercion or interference by others, so long as they do not harm others. In the words of John Stuart...

Human Rights, Autonomy and National Sovereignty

This paper examines the legal and ethical problems involved in reconciling two separate rights, each of which plays a fundamental role in the current philosophical debate surrounding international relations and international law: the right to national sovereignty to which many states lay claim, on the one hand, and the right to selfdetermination, on the other. Refusal to grant the right of self...

Empowering Minority Women : Autonomy versus Participation

Feminist attempts to empower women within their own cultural traditions have employed two broad strategies: authentic choice and participation. This paper argues that the methodological problems that beset the authentic choice strategy tell in favour of the participation approach. However, proponents of the participation strategy have failed to pay sufficient attention to the background conditi...