National University of Ireland, Galway Irish Centre for Human Rights

School of Law 2020 – 2021

2020-21Semester 2

Lecturer: Professor Siobhán Mullally, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, Established

Professor of Human Rights Law

Room 208, Irish Centre for Human Rights, Earls Island, NUI Galway

Email: siobhan.mullally@nuigalway.ie

Credits: 5 ECTS (Teaching hours: 12 hours, Semester 2) (timetable to be confirmed)

Office hours (by appointment, please email in advance).

Aim To equip students to analyse and evaluate the legal, political, and philosophical issues relevant to the law, policy and practice of minority rights and the rights of indigenous peoples in international law.

Learning Objectives: Analyse and assess legal arguments relating to minority rights in international human rights

law Analyse and evaluate the philosophical and jurisprudential foundations of minority rights Analyse and critically evaluate models of integration, multiculturalism and minority rights

mailto:siobhan.mullally@nuigalway.ie

Assess the potentially conflicting claims of gender, minority rights and migration law and policy

Teaching methods: Teaching is by means of seminar discussion, advanced readings, and case-studies. Case-studies and

readings will be assigned in advance. All teaching materials, and weekly seminar handouts, with

questions for discussion and further readings, will be posted in advance on Blackboard. Guest

lectures will be delivered by Adjunct Professor, UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand

de Varennes, and by Dr Cathal Doyle, Middlesex University.

Assessment: The course will be examined by means of a research paper of not more than 3,000 words (excluding

footnotes and bibliography).

SEMINAR TOPICS:

1 MINORITY RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

2 MINORITY RIGHTS AND RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN THE UN SYSTEM

3 MULTICULTURALISM, GENDER EQUALITY, MINORITY RIGHTS – CONFLICTS AND

CHALLENGES

4 THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

5 THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Background Readings

2019 UN Special Rapporteur on Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Thematic Report) The right of indigenous peoples’ to autonomy or self-government UN Doc. A/74/149

Ali, Shaheen Sardar. 2013. Authority and authenticity. Sharia councils, muslim women's rights and the English courts. Child & Family Law Quarterly, Volume 25 (Number 2)

C Albertyn ‘Religion, Custom and Gender: Marital Law Reform in South Africa’ (2013) 9 International Journal of Law in Context 1–25

Mullally S ‘Revisiting the Shah Bano case in India: Feminism and Multicultural Dilemmas’ in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 4 (2004), 671-692

Chimni, B. S. “Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto.” In The Third

World and International Order: Law, Politics and Globalisation, edited by A. Anghie, B. S.

Chimni, K. Mickelson, and O. Okafor, 47–73. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

Gathii, James Thuo, The Agenda of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)

(December 20, 2018). Forthcoming in Jeffrey Dunoff and Mark Pollack (eds) International

Legal Theory: Foundations and Frontiers, Cambridge University Press (2019). Available at

SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3304767

Minority Rights Group International Minority and Indigenous Trends 2019, KEY TRENDS

REPORT | available at: https://minorityrights.org/publications/minority-and-

indigenoustrends-2019/

2017 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples - Impacts of

climate change and climate finance on indigenous peoples’ rights UN Doc. A/HRC/36/46

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/SRIndigenousPeoples/Pages/AnnualReports.asp

x

2017 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples - Assessment of

the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. UN Doc. A/72/186

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/SRIndigenousPeoples/Pages/AnnualReports.asp

x

https://ssrn.com/abstract=3304767https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/SRIndigenousPeoples/Pages/AnnualReports.aspxhttps://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/SRIndigenousPeoples/Pages/AnnualReports.aspx

2015 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples - Rights of

indigenous women and girls UN Doc. A/HRC/30/41

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/SRIndigenousPeoples/Pages/AnnualReports.asp

x

Rajagopal, B. “Locating the Third World in Cultural Geography.” Third World Legal Studies

15, no. 2 (1998–9): 1–20. [Google Scholar]

Merino R (2018) Reimagining the Nation-State: Indigenous Peoples and the Making of

Plurinationalism in Latin America Leiden Journal of International Law 31(4) 773-792

Gathii, J. “International Law and Eurocentricity.” European Journal of International Law 9

(1998): 184–211. 10.1093/ejil/9.1.184

Keane D and Waughray A (eds) Fifty years of the International Convention on the

Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination: A living instrument (Manchester UP:

2018)

Heiner Bielefeldt, Nazila Ghanea, and Michael Wiener (2016) Freedom of Religion or Belief:

An International Law Commentary (OUP)

Malcolm Evans, Peter Petkoff, and Julian Rivers (ed) (2015) The Changing Nature of

Religious Rights under International Law (OUP)

Castellino J and Cavanaugh K (2013) Minority Rights in the Middle East (OUP)

Mullally S and Enright M (eds). (2013) Complex Transformations – Gender, Religious

Subjectivities and the New Politics of Belonging Special Issue: International Journal of Law in

Context (2013)

Castellino J and Cavanaugh K ‘Minority Rights in the Middle East: A Comparative Legal

Analysis’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 421pp.

Castellino J Global Minority Rights [ed.] (Dartmouth: Ashgate, 2012)

Doyle C Indigenous Peoples, Title to Territory, Rights and Resources: The Transformative

Role of Free Prior and Informed Consent (2014: Routledge)

Patrick Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1997), and Patrick Thornberry, Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2013).

Benhabib S The Claims of Culture (Princeton University Press: 2002)

Modood T Multiculturalism (Cambridge: Polity Press 2013)

‘Calling ISIL Atrocities Against the Yezidis by Their Rightful Name’: Do They Constitute the

Crime of Genocide?, Vian Dakhil; Aldo Zammit Borda; Alexander R. J. Murray, Human Rights

Law Review, Volume 17, Issue 2, 1 June 2017, Pages 261–283,

https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngx004

Erueti, A “The politics of international indigenous rights”, University of Toronto Law

Journal, Volume 67, Number 4, Fall 2017, pp. 569-595

Makau Mutua, Critical Race Theory and International Law: The View of an Insider-Outsider, 45

VILL. L. REV. 841 (2000).

Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol45/iss5/2

Anna Spain Bradley, ‘Human Rights Racism’ Harvard Human Rights Law Journal (Vol 32) Spring

2019, available at:

https://harvardhrj.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2019/07/Human-Rights-Racism-1.pdf

Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance

Nationalist Populism (2018) https://undocs.org/en/A/73/305

Mullally S ‘Retreat from Multiculturalism: community cohesion and civic integration’ International Journal of Law in Context, 93. 3 (2013), 411-428

Mullally S ‘Civic Integration, Migrant Women and the Veil’ Modern Law Review Vol. 74. 1 (2011) 34-54.

https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngx004https://muse.jhu.edu/article/676663https://muse.jhu.edu/article/676663https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol45/iss5/2https://harvardhrj.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2019/07/Human-Rights-Racism-1.pdfhttps://undocs.org/en/A/73/305