Minority Treaties

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Minority Treaties[a] refer to the treaties regarding the protection of ethnic minorities signed during or shortly after the Treaty of Versailles and Paris Peace Conference between various minor states and the newly created League of Nations (primarily in the period between 1919 and 1921).

The treaties were designed to safeguard the rights of ethnic minorities in those countries by giving the minorities the right to appeal directly to the League. The victorious powers attempted to ensure the stable development of the region between defeated Germany and Soviet Russia a region characterized by the existence of many ethnic groups and the emergence of new nations. The idea behind the Minority Treaties was that by subjecting those countries to the scrutiny of others and to the threat of sanction and intervention from the newly created international body, the League of Nations, the rights of minorities would be safeguarded.

As with most of the principals adopted by the League, the Minorities Treaties were a part of the Wilsonian idealist approach to international relations, and as with the League itself, the Minority Treaties were increasingly ignored by the respective governments, with the entire system mostly collapsing in the late 1930s.

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[edit] Bilateral treaties

There were several bilateral Minority Treaties, each signed between one of the country in question and the League. The treaties were signed between the League and some of the newly established nations: (Poland, Yugoslavia (also known then as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), Czechoslovakia) and the League of Nations. Similar treaties were also imposed on Greece and Entente-allied Romania in exchange for their territorial enlargement, and on some of the nations defeated in the First World War (Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey). At the same time, Albania, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and, outside of Europe, Iraq were persuaded to accept minority obligations as part of the terms of their admission to the League of Nations.[1]

The Polish treaty (signed in June 1919, as the first of the Minority Treaties, and serving as the template for the subsequent ones[2]) is often referred to as either the Little Treaty of Versailles or the Polish Minority Treaty; the Austrian, Czechoslovak and Yugoslavian treaties are referred to as Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye (1919); the Romanian treaty as the Treaty of Paris (1919), the Greek as the Treaty of Sèvres (1920); the Hungarian as the Treaty of Trianon (1920), the Bulgarian as the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine (1919), and the Turkish as the Treaty of Lausanne (1923).[1] Note that in most of the above cases the minority treaties were only one of many articles of the aforementioned treaties.

[edit] System

The Minority Treaties, forming the basis for the League's system of minorities, was a conciliatory procedure, designed to enforce the treaties without inciting minorities or alienating the affected governments. The Council of the League (rather than the more encompassing Assembly) had the right and obligation to raise complaints of treaty violations. Minority petitions could be sent from any source, but only individual Council members could place a complaint on the agenda. Differences of opinion between an accused government and the League were to be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice for a final decision (in fact, most cases were solved by negotiations between affected governments before the International Court intervention).[3]

[edit] Importance

The Minority Treaties, recognized as history's first minority treaties,[3] were an important step in protection of minorities and recognition of human rights, bringing the subject to an international forum. In them, for the first time, states and international communities recognized that there are people living outside normal legal protection and who required an additional guarantee of their elementary rights from an external body, as protection within individual states itself may not be sufficient.[3][1] Among issues successfully resolved by the Minority Treaties was the Åland crisis.[1]

Nonetheless, the treaties were also subject to past and present criticism. The countries subject to the treaties saw it as limiting their sovereignty and infringing their right for self-determination - as the League was allowed to influence national, religious and educational policy in those countries - and suggesting that they were not competent enough to deal with their internal matters. Further criticism centered around the treaties not being obligatory for the established countries (like France, Germany, United Kingdom or Russia). The Western countries, who dictated the treaties in the aftermath of the First World War, saw minority safeguards as unnecessary for themselves, and trusted that they could fulfill the "standard of civilization";[1] it was the new Central and Eastern European countries that were not trusted to respect those rights - and, of course, Bolshevik Russia, still in the throes of the Russian Revolution, was a separate case. This inequality further offended the smaller countries. Finally, this inequality also meant that the minority rights were not seen as a universal right; it was exclusively a foreign policy issue - and thus populations which had state to back up their minorities were relatively disadvantaged when compared to ones backed up by a powerful state or group of interests.[1][3][4]

With the decline of League of Nations in the 1930s the treaties were increasingly considered unenforceable and useless. The League Council, charged with enforcing the various minority treaties, often failed to act upon complaints from minorities. There was an unwritten rule that state policies aimed at the cultural assimilation of minorities should be ignored as the "minor evil" with regard to the rights enshrined in the Minority Treaties when those policies were seen as guaranteeing the internal stability of the state concerned. When the Council did review cases, the reviews were commonly dominated by the countries whose ethnic groups were affected, and which tried not only to resolve the problem of mistreatment of their minorities, but score other political goals on the international scene - sometimes even sacrificing the very minority in question (German and Hungarian governments are recognized as having abused the system the most). And of course, the League, lacking its own army, could not coerce any state to adhere to its recommendations.[1][3]

Even before Adolf Hitler seized control of Germany in 1933, the problems with the Minority Treaties were evident. Various European governments continued to abuse minorities, the latter loudly protested, their complains were exploited by interested parties with ulterior motives, and the League interfered as little as possible.[3] The system suffered a death blow with Poland's rejection of its treaty in 1934. It was officially judged to be extinct by the United Nations Secretariat in 1950.[1]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

a ^  Sometimes also known as the Treaties on the Protection of National Minorities or Minorities Protecton Treaties; the term Minority Treaties is the most concise of many names, and is used after Dugdale and Bewes (1926). The names of specific treaties affecting various countries vary from case to case, see #Bilateral treaties.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Jennifer Jackson Preece, Minority Rights in Europe: From Westphalia to Helsinki Review of International Studies, 1997, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 1-18.
  2. ^ Aimee Genell, "Were the Minority Treaties a Failure?" - H-net 2005 review of Carole Fink. 2004. Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83837-5
  3. ^ a b c d e f Carole Fink, "The minorities question at the Paris Peace Conference" in The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Manfred Franz Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman, Elisabeth Gläser (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0521621321, Google Print - p.249 onward
  4. ^ Boris Tsilevich, EU Enlargement and the Protection of National Minorities: Opportunities, Myths, and Prospects, 2001.

[edit] Further reading