Minority Politics in Practice: Protection and Empowerment in the Danish-German Border Region

This article examines how the members of national minorities in the Danish-German border region are protected and empowered. This is done through an analysis of the institutions and mechanism with which the state and land governments preserve the minority culture in the region today. The article uses as point of reference the 2005 OHCHR Plan of Action: Protection and Empowerment, which states that human rights are best protected when people are empowered to assert and claim their rights. The OHCHR plan further claims that, while human rights are universally accepted theoretically, there exists an implementation gap in practice. This article shows that this is not true for the Danish-German border region. The first part of the paper outlines the meaning of the expressions "protection" and "empowerment" as they are used in the OHCHR plan. The analytical part later shows how national minorities in the Danish-German border region are "protected" and "empowered" by the Danish and German governments. The paper further describes the mechanisms for the protection and empowerment of both minorities in the region, and how the institutions promoting minority cultures are organized and structured. The case study is well-suited to show how the theoretical empowerment of national minorities can be transformed into genuine minority empowerment.