As indicated in the first section of this chapter, a human rights based view of citizenship is used in this chapter to emphasise that the substantive norms and procedural/process aspects of this status should be derived from or at least consistent with present universal human rights standards. The essential pur pose of human rights is to ensure the effective protection of certain funda mental entitlements for all human beings everywhere, including countries where they are not provided for as fundamental constitutional rights in order to safeguard them from the contingencies of the national political and admin istrative processes. In view of the tension between this idea and the principle and practice of national sovereignty, however, it is critical for human rights standards to be acknowledged as the product of international agreement. Moreover, the challenge of these rights to a strict view of sovereignty would not be plausible or credible without the promise of international co operation in the protection ofhuman rights. The claim ofthe international community to act as arbiter in safeguarding certain minimum standards in this regard is not credible without the corresponding commitment of its members to encourage and support each other in the process. That role is also more likely to be accepted by a state when it is the collective effort of all other states, rather than simply the foreign policy objective of another single state or groups of states.
Accordingly, the distinguishing features of human rights for my purposes here are universal recognition of the same rights and international co operation in their implementation. For our purposes here, human rights documents do not define citizenship as such, but several of those principles are relevant or applicable. These include the fundamental principles of self determination and equality and non discrimination on various grounds including religion provided for by Article 1(2) and (3) of the Charter of the United Nations of 1945, which is a treaty that is legally binding on all Islamic countries today. The same principles are reaffirmed in subsequent human rights treaties which have been ratified by the vast majority of present Islamic countries. These include Articles i and 2 of both the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of 1966. These two Covenants and other human rights treaties also provide for specific human rights, like equality before the law and protection of freedom of religion, to which non Muslim citizens of Islamic countries are equally entitled.25
25 United Nations, Human rights: A compilation of international instruments (New York, 1994) vol. I; and Antonio Cassese, Self determination of peoples: A legal reappraisal (Cambridge, 1995).
World History
