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Minorities at the United Nations: the UN Working Group on Minorities in Context

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Minorities at the United Nations: the UN Working Group on Minorities in Context Asbjørn Eide* Minorities at the United Nations: The UN Working Group on Minorities in Context I. Introduction The United Nations Working Group on Minorities was established in and met in June for its eleventh session. I chaired the Working Group for ten years before I decided in not to stand for another election to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, where I had been a member for years. Leaving the Sub-Commission implied also leaving the Working Group on Minorities, since it is a subsidiary body of the Sub-Commission, and is composed of five members (one from each of the five regions into which the UN divides the world) in addition to a great number of active observers with speaking rights: minority representatives, government representatives, international agencies and scholars. The achievements of the Working Group were not only due to their very active contribu- tions, including numerous working papers, but also to the many minority representa- tives from around the world, the non-governmental organizations – where the most persistent and constructive was the Minority Rights Group International – and the many scholars who took an active part and made the Working Group rather unique in the UN system. The purpose of this short paper is to provide a brief description of the work and functions of the Working Group and to place it in the context of historical evolution of the attention given by the UN to minority issues. This paper provides only a brief sum- mary; a more detailed reflection of the achievements including the many contributions by the participants has to wait for later. The paper starts with the early years of the UN where the main focus was on indi- vidual rights with very little support for minority issues, the emergence of a separate strand focusing on the rights of indigenous peoples (collective rights) and the differ- ences in approach to persons belonging to minorities (individual rights), with a new * Senior fellow and former Director, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Oslo; Guest Professor, University of Lund, Sweden; Chairman, UN Working Group on Minorities; Member, Advisory Committee under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. European Yearbook of Minority Issues Vol 4, 2004/5, ISBN 90 04 14953 8, 615-636. © 2006 Koninklijke Brill NV. Printed in the Netherlands. Asbjørn Eide sense of urgency on minority issues since , not only due to minority concerns, but also to consideration of peace and stability. The paper reviews the emergence of the Working Group on Minorities and presents some of the main issues examined by that group, including issues related to effective participation and to education. A second purpose is to compare the functions and activities of the Working Group with other international bodies and mechanisms dealing with minority issues both glo- bally and regionally. II. The Historical Background A. The Legacy of the League of Nations and the United Nations’ Initial Reluctance1 The minority protection system of the League of Nations was intended to safeguard against the possible negative consequences with the implementation of the principle of national self-determination in Central and Eastern Europe. The principle had been included as one of the points that President Woodrow Wilson had declared as the aims of the future peace settlements when the United States entered the war raging in Europe. The right of nations to self-determination was intended to guide the dis- solution or partial dismemberment of the losing parties in World War I, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German ‘Reich’. A mosaic of different ethnic groups lived interspersed with each other and required a strengthened system of minority protection. A number of minority treaties or uni- lateral commitments were made after World War I.2 This was still not a general system of minority protection, but applied only to a small number of states mainly in Central and Eastern Europe, which they increasingly resented and later refused to apply. Thus, no general minority protection system was established. Nevertheless, it became the forerunner of a more general minority system for two reasons: a) Because most of the treaties and declarations were modelled on the Polish/German treaty (see above). As a consequence, some general principles emerged out of particular commitments; b) Since the League of Nations was entrusted with the task of receiving and making decisions in regard to petitions claiming that minority rights under the treaties had been violated, a case law emerged, which had some significance for the post-World War II develop- ments. At the time of the League of Nations, human rights had not formed part of inter- national law. The only instruments available to protect members of minorities from The history of minority protection and the evolution within the United Nations is dis- cussed, i.a., in Patrick Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Clarendon Press, Oxford, ). Five states concluded treaties with the principal Allied and Associated Powers (the victors of World War I). The five states were Poland (Versailles ), Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia (St. Germain-en-Laye ), Hungary (Trianon ) and Turkey (Lausanne ). Provisions on minorities were also included in the peace treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey. Five states undertook obligations on the protection of minorities in declarations made before the League of Nations as a condition for the admission to the League: Albania (), Lithuania (), Latvia (), Estonia () and Iraq (). .
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