Termination of the International Protection of Minorities Promoted by the League of Nations and the Paris Peace Conference 1946-1947
Abstract
The Paris Peace Conference in 1946 tried to solve many problems of the post-war world, in particular, those in relation to earlier German allies. The issue of minorities was one of them.
Hungary, in particular, reminded that neighbouring countries including Czechoslovakia had adopted rather extensive obligations with respect to minorities after WWI, and claimed that the rights of those minorities were not respected after WWII. The purpose of this paper is not to describe in details the formation and development of the international protection of minorities under the supervision of the League of Nations; however, it should be mentioned what complex circumstances brought that protection to its end.
All states located between Germany, Italy and the USSR were forced, after the First World War, to accept those obligations which were almost identical in all cases. The supervision of the protection of minority rights was a duty of the League of Nations.
After WWII in 1950, the United Nations Organization refused to adopt the minority obligations, which therefore became considered extinct. However, this issue was not clear during the Paris Conference in 1946, and gave rise to controversies.
Considering minority provisions inserted in peace agreements after WWII adopted during the Paris Peace Conference between 1946 and 1947 it is obvious that the only focus was on non-discrimination whilst other special rights of minorities were absent, particularly the right to use their mother tongue in schools and in dealings with administrative bodies. There was no will to respect special rights of minorities after 1945.
Similar attitude can be seen in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. The lack of confidence with respect to the rights of minorities, except for guarantees of nondiscrimination regarding the race, language and religion, was apparent after WWII.
This approach can be seen in the 1960s or even in the 1990s.