Eighteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Terminology related to minority issues in international law has a broad impact on managing cultural diversity, the rights of racial, ethnic, national, and language groups, and also the security of the state, societal groups. and in general human security. Lack of transparency about the meaning of ethnicity, people, nation, indigenous ,and different legal interpretation around them, provoke a grave difficulty in the course of coding and promoting minority rights. This global challenge has created much more serious confusion in countries such as Iran where minority-state relations are highly securitized. Securitization of minority issues along with this terminology ambiguity in international law make the minority-state relation in Iran more complicated. This paper shows how the confusion around terminology affects the minority issues in Iran by focusing on the differences among the terminologies which have used by international law bodies (governmental, non- governmental), Iranian government, and also academic scholars. Communal identity terminology is a controversial issue among academician, politician, and ethnicity actors in Iran likewise other countries. It is not wondering phenomenon between pro- nationalist and ethnic elites hardliners, due to they know by manipulating of these terms they could play with identity cards more efficiently.