 A group right is a right held by a group as a group rather than by its members severally. The “group” in “group right” describes the nature of the right-holder; it does not describe the mere fact that the right is confined to the members of a group rather than possessed by all members of a society or by humanity at large. Much of the controversy that surrounds group rights focuses on whether groups can hold rights and, if they can, on the conditions a group must satisfy if it is to be a right-holder. Some proponents of group rights conceive right-holding groups as moral entities in their own right, so that the group has a being and status analogous to those of an individual person. Others give groups no such independent standing, but conceive group rights as rights shared in and held jointly by the group’s members. Some opponents of group rights challenge the very proposition that groups can bear rights. Others do not, but worry about the threats that group rights might pose for individuals and their rights. They are met by counter-claims that individual and group rights, suitably formulated, can be complementary rather than conflicting and that some group rights might also be human rights.