ABSTRACT

The cultural rights of minority groups are recognized in international human rights law. These rights include the right of minority groups to adopt various measures to protect their cultural identity, which may include closure of the group's community to outsiders. The state in which such groups reside have a concurrent duty to respect these rights and sometimes even to take positive measures to ensure their implementation. Considering demographic factors, then, is regarded as legitimate when they are designed to protect a minority group. The rights of majority groups, on the other hand, are taken to be ensured by the mere fact that they constitute a majority within the state and as not requiring special measures.

This state of affairs is challenged, however, in face of mass immigration that might change the relation between majority and minority groups within the state. Under these circumstances one should ask whether a majority has the right to preserve its own culture by means of immigration policy that takes into account demographic factors. I will argue that the duty of states under international human rights law to protect rights of minority groups might serve as an incentive to restrict immigration that might endanger the character of the state. This character, the state's pubic culture, is the outcome of the collective preferences of the majority of its citizens, which, the assumption is, ought to be respected.