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Ethnicity is difficult to define. Its close analog, race, has been discarded by some as a useful subject of scientific research. Common ethnicity as a psychosocial reality constituting a community is now understood as a cultural attribute that links individual human beings, such as a common language, religion, social rituals and routines, and a feeling of togetherness. Donald L. Horowitz attributes this feeling of togetherness to a "strong sense of similarity, with roots in perceived genetic affinity, or early socialization, or both" (Horowitz, 2001, p. 47). The common bond of an ethnic group may have been intensified through a shared history of being victimized by others, as exemplified by the social pathology of anti-Semitism or the persecution suffered by the Roma and the Sinti.

Conflict is an essential part of human existence, be it inter-individual or inter-group. Although a large part of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle of political ideologies, expressed in both hot and cold wars, the 1990s and the early part of the twenty-first century saw a resurgence of ethnic rationalizations for the outbreak of hostilities. The atrocities in disintegrating Yugoslavia, fuelled by policies of ethnic cleansing and culminating in the slaughter of Srebrenica, as well as the genocide in Rwanda and continuing bloody feuds in Africa, are two examples of major outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence.

Ethnicity as a perceived social bond is a fact of human life, and can be used to good or insidious effects. It is often at the root of a social group's quest for political, economic, and cultural self-determination. Self-assertion of an ethnic group may yield socially positive outcomes, such as its economic flourishing and political integration. It can lead to linguistic as well as cultural diversity and the development of distinctive styles of art and cuisines. It can thus be, and often is, an important reference point for building a nation. Tensions between groups may be seen as natural, even beneficial, to the extent that they promote healthy competition and a quest for common rules limiting the contest itself.

When self-assertion of an ethnic group turns from creative into destructive tension, brooding hostility, and ultimately violence against outsiders, however, ethnic conflict becomes pathological and destructive of the values of human dignity. Still, in many of the conflicts occurring in recent years, the phenomenon of ethnic difference may only partially explain the actions on the ground. In Rwanda, for example, the colonial regime's perceived preferences for the Tutsis, and political power differentials in the post-independence years may have contributed as much to the mass slaughter as the ethnic difference itself. The presence of an economically dominant minority ethnic group (e.g., the Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia) may also play a role in the emergence of ethnic hostilities, as do religious differences (as seen in the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland or the riots between Hindus and Muslims in India).

Social and political solutions to the issues raised by ethnic self-assertion can be categorized according to effect. If the self-assertion is positive, functioning as the glue of a nation, it can be used to create a common engine in the quest for achievement of all the things that humans value. The group's claim to self-determination, recognized for "peoples" essentially self-defined, would allow for the establishment of confident units of self-government, be they nation-states or autonomous units within a political structure in which power is shared vertically (federalism) or horizontally (with provisions for minority rights) or a mixture of both. An order of human dignity would aspire to ensure that such self-assertion of the group will not infringe on the rights of outsider individuals and groups.

Several international legal prescriptions have been designed to protect ethnic groups as such. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined this international crime as any of a number of acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." This definition is repeated verbatim in the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court. More generally, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the two United Nations human rights covenants of 1966, mandate equality before the law and specifically prohibit discrimination on account of "race," or "national or social origin." Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides a positive guarantee for "ethnic minorities" "not [to] be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language." The 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious, and Linguistic Minorities defines those rights in greater detail, adding a people's right to participate in decisions that affect it, as well as the right to establish and maintain its own institutions, as well as positive and negative obligations of states to foster minorities. The Council of Europe's 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities obligates member states to detailed standards of treatment and requires them to report periodically on their performance to an advisory committee composed of eighteen independent experts in the field. Indigenous peoples have received their own level of international legal protection, as reflected in the 1989 International Labor Organization's Convention No. 169; the 1993 Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; the creation, in 2000, of a Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; and customary international law rights to their culture and their traditional lands.

As far as the dark side of ethnic self-assertion is concerned, the international system has often been less than diligent in preventing outbreaks of ethnic violence, or in stopping it, sanctioning it, and preventing it from reoccurring. A model for effective monitoring and prevention could be the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This office fulfills a dual mandate of "early warning" and "early action": it is duty-bound to alert the OSCE when tensions involving national minorities that have an international character threaten to escalate to a level where they cannot be contained. To arrest inter-ethnic violence once it has broken out, mechanisms such as humanitarian intervention (e.g., in Kosovo) have been developed that would appear to allow the use of force from the outside, at least in the case of genocide and other massive violations of fundamental human rights. Humanitarian law would put limits on the conduct of hostilities and thus would protect civilians, even though the line between civilians and combatants in this type of conflict has often been blurred. Domestic and, increasingly, international criminal sanctions are being put in place to punish conduct such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws of war. The International Military Tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo set precedents for sanctioning forums such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court, as well as hybrid domestic-international tribunals such as those established for East Timor and Sierra Leone. Also, systems of civil liability, such as the Alien Tort Claims Act in the United States, are designed to redress the wrongs involved. Beyond those immediate reactions and restorations of the social order, societies torn apart by ethnic conflict face the need to be healed over a long period of time. Institutions searching for the truth and society-wide sharing of pertinent information have helped in this quest for ultimate reconciliation.

SEE ALSO Cossacks; Ethnic Cleansing; Ethnicity; Kosovo; Minorities; Racial Groups; Sri Lanka

Siegfried Wiessner