Minority Treaties

The Minority Treaties^[a] are treaties, League of Nations mandates,^[1] and unilateral declarations^[2] made by countries applying for membership in the League of Nations that conferred basic rights on all the inhabitants of the country without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race or religion. The country concerned had to acknowledge the clauses of the treaty as fundamental laws of state and as obligations of international concern placed under the guarantee of the League of Nations.^[3] Most of the treaties entered into force after the Paris Peace Conference.

Declaration by the government of Albania, issued 2 October 1921.

[14]

Declaration by the government of Latvia, issued 19 July 1923, heard by the Council of the League on 11 September 1923.

[15]

Declaration by the government of Lithuania, issued 12 May 1922.

[16]

Declaration by the government of Bulgaria, issued 29 September 1924.

[17]

Declaration by the government of Greece, issued 29 September 1924.

[18]

Diplomatic history of World War I

International relations of the Great Powers (1814–1919)

International relations (1919–1939)

– granting special rights and protection to some minorities under the Ottoman Empire

Treaty of Berlin (1878)

(1948) – declaration of United Nations, successor of the League of Nations

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Notes[edit]

a ^{^} Sometimes also known as the Treaties on the Protection of National Minorities or Minorities Protection 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.

Azcarate, P. de. League of Nations and National Minorities (1945)

online

Dugdale, Blanche E. C.; Bewes, Wyndham A. (1926). "The Working of the Minority Treaties". . 5 (2). Royal Institute of International Affairs: 79–95. doi:10.2307/3014590. ISSN 1473-7981. JSTOR 3014590.

Journal of the British Institute of International Affairs

Fink, Carole. Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection (2004) .

online review

Fink, Carole. , Contemporary European History, Vol. 2 (November 2000), pp. 385–400

Minority Rights as an International Question

Archived 2008-10-11 at the Wayback Machine

Minorities Protection Treaties

Motta, Giuseppe. Less than Nations. Central-Eastern European Minorities after WW1, 2 vols. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013 Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine