Taking Ethno-Cultural Diversity Seriously in Constitutional Design : A Theory of Minority Rights for Addressing Africa's Multi-Ethnic Challenge

Using a legal and multidisciplinary approach towards empirical and prescriptive analysis of contemporary minority rights standards, this book defends and elaborates a robust minority rights framework for articulating a constitutional design responsive to the claims of ethno-cultural groups in Africa. Despite decades of nation-building exercise, ethnic-based claims for substantive equality, justice and equitable political inclusion and socio-economic order continue to result in communal rivalries. These are claims that define and represent the issue of minorities in Africa, of which these conflicts are manifestations. Although ethnic conflicts in Africa have been a subject of a large number of studies, the potential and role of norms on minority rights to address claims that ethno-cultural groups raise has not received the attention it deserves. Based on materials from normative political theory and international human rights law and using an empirical and prescriptive analysis, this book defends a robust system of minority rights built around culture, equality and self-determination. This is employed to elaborate an adequate constitutional design providing policy frameworks (multilingual language policy, recognition and affirmation of cultural diversity,), structures (that ensure just representation and participation of members of all groups) and norms (that guarantee substantive equality and the rights to language, religion and culture). The study then proffers two cases studies (South Africa and Ethiopia) to ascertain how such constitutional design might be translated into actual policy frameworks, institutions and norms. The issue of minorities in Africa : describing its context and understanding its nature -- The issue of minorities in the political and constitutional discourse and practice of post-colonial Africa -- The normative bases for constitutional accommodation of ethno-cultural diversity in Africa : the three components of the minority rights framework -- Towards a multicultural constitutional framework : the institutional dimensions of the minority rights framework -- South Africa's constitutional design for the accommodation of diversity -- The case of Ethiopia's ethnic federalism -- Conclusion, findings, and final observations