Zawaya

Yes for protecting minorities, but...

By: Monia Ferjani

Protecting minorities is one of the human rights pillars approved by the United Nations, and defended by human rights organizations worldwide. Many provisions recommend respecting and protecting minority rights based on race, language or religion; but while some countries enacted laws to guarantee these rights, others fail to respect them on the ground. As a matter of fact, minorities were often persecuted by dictatorships, such as Nazi Germany and Yugoslavia, or used as a pretext to harass dissents.

It has been nearly eighteen years since the General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, which was intended to prevent segregation, and find peaceful solutions to the conflict. This Declaration in not applied in many countries, but responsibility for that does not lie only on minorities, since influential majorities that are entitled to enact civil laws, ought to adopt minority rights and promote them, out of conviction that we’re living in a large society whose components should be equally interdependent to serve humanity that has become threatened by hatred, fears and terror; and that diversity is a source of enrichment, not a reason for division.

It is necessary to awaken the conscience when the law fails to be influential. Civil society components – including political parties and associations -, the media, the curricula, and the religious discourse – since all religions promote moderation, solidarity, forgiveness and compassion -, all have a role to play.

For example, whether we like it or not, Amazigh is the Maghreb’s original language, and it shouldn’t be marginalized despite our attachment to Arabic. Giving a more important place to the Amazigh language in educational programmes and institutions, the media, cultural productions, and elected councils, will not pose a threat to classical Arabic.

Jewish, Christian and Shiite minorities – with all their sub-groups -, bring richness and diversity to society. This is not new for the Maghreb, as Muslims, Jews and Christians have always coexisted in harmony in North Africa.

Maghreb countries are a cultural bridge, witnessing the passage of people of different races, languages and religions, who interacted with native Maghreb people, influenced them, and were impacted by them. As a result, engineering, architecture, industry, arts and dialects progressed…

Respecting minorities is not a defect in the Maghreb culture, as much as it is a Western necessity dictated by the atrocities that occurred in Nazi Germany and Yugoslavia after Marshal Tito, and the suffering of the Eskimos and native Indians…

Other than the minorities mentioned in the 1993 Declaration of the General Assembly, we hear today about new emerging ones that include homosexuals, atheists, Satanists and others.

What can we do since human rights are indivisible? Do Maghreb countries support such minorities despite their contradiction with the values of identity and belonging, the teachings of religion, and morality?

This is another topic for debate.