The Right to Participation of Minorities and Irish Travellers

The idea of participation is becoming increasingly important in international human rights law and recent political and constitutional theory. There is an emerging international law on the right of minorities to participate in public life. There are many problems, however, with putting this right into practice. It is not enough to offer formal opportunities for representation or even to facilitate more participatory processes. This article explores how participation is more easily proclaimed than practised by examining the position of one ethnic minority, Travellers, in a liberal democracy, Ireland. While there are many formal opportunities for participation, these do not necessarily result in effective participation on the basis of equality. They still result in many decisions that fail to consider the Traveller culture and identity. There are hopeful avenues to pursue in improving participation: civil society organisations have shown considerable initiative, especially in making use of a dialogue between non‐governmental organisations and international organisations to put pressure on a national government. Within representative institutions, there is the possibility of special representation to offset the disadvantages of traditional representative democracy and also the suggestion that specialised parliamentary bodies may be more willing to address issues of minority concern.