New and old religious minorities in international law

Abstract

In a time of growing transformations of the definition of religious minorities, the chapter aims to investigate the different trajectories of development of this topic in international law. To explore this issue, I propose an analysis divided into four paragraphs corresponding to the evolution of religious minorities’ rights (the traditional definition; the enlargement; the inclusion; the intersec-tion). The chapter aims to develop the following contents: (a) an analysis of the traditional criteria defining religious minorities in international documents between 1947 and 1985; (b) a model of investigation of new religious minorities within specific trajectories of transformation of this category (implementation; inclusion; intersection); (c) a vocabulary test concerning the innovations in the linguistic approach to religious minorities; (d) the effects of the different dynamics of innovation on the rights of religious minorities.