ABSTRACT
What is the basis for collective representation in world politics? According to international law and practice, the answer is clear – the state. But is the answer the same if we rephrase the question in more normative terms – what should be the basis for collective representation in world politics? For many, the answer does not change. Yet for others, usually those who feel that states fail to adequately represent them, it does. The subjects of this book, Romani activists and their sympathizers, are among those. Claiming that states have failed to represent the interests of their people, the Roma, they have taken it upon themselves to represent ‘Romani interests’ in international decision-making fora. However, unlike ethnic or liberation movements, Romani activists do not seek the creation of an independent state for their people. In order to legitimize their representation, they argue that people should be represented in international decision-making on the basis of nationhood, not statehood. They are asking for recognition of the Roma as a subject of international law with the right to fully participate in international decision-making on the basis of being a non-territorial nation. Their three decades of attempts to represent the Romani people at the global level – through the United Nations (UN) fora – are the focus of this book. By analysing their specific efforts, this book aims to provide a contribution to the contemporary discourse on the role and position of non-state actors in a specific realm of world politics – the UN system. At the same time, this book is the first attempt to bring the Roma, Europe’s largest transnational ethnic minority (or, as many of the activists, argue, a non-territorial nation), into the discourse of international relations, which has until now marginalized or ignored them.
