Human Rights and Ethnic Conflict Management: The Case of Nigeria

Against the background of the debate among scholars of human rights over whether group rights exist, and if they do, whether they are compatible with individual rights, this article tries to show that in divided multi-ethnic societies there is a need to balance the two kinds of rights. It approaches human rights from a conflict-management perspective and argues that there are interests and demands of a group nature which individual rights cannot satisfy and that, in fact, the observance of group rights is often a necessary condition for the enjoyment of individual rights. This is especially so in countries where there are deep and structural socio-economic and political cleavages among ethnic groups and where the state is not an autonomous agency or neutral umpire, as is assumed by liberal scholars. The underlying premise of the article is that human rights are neither natural nor given, and therefore that the kinds of rights demanded as well as the purposes for which they are demanded are often indicative of the kinds of balances that need to be made between individual and group rights. The article discusses the human rights approach to ethnic conflict management in Nigeria from these standpoints.