A/74/160 36. There are clearly notable tensions between the two early versions, in terms of both who is to be considered a minority and the nature and extent of their rights. 10 The later proposal is notably more restrictive than the initial proposal: the word “minority” has completely disappeared, to be replaced by groups made up of citizens, and a number of subjective considerations and other requirements not contained in the initial draft make any rights claims more difficult and qualified: minorities must now “want to be accorded differential treatment” and must be “clearly different from the majority”, and their rights are subject to demonstrations such as “if they so choose” and being “compatible with public order and security”. Any reference to religious institutions has also disappeared in the second version, and minorities must also be clearly distinguished from the rest of the population. 37. The differences highlighted above illustrate the ongoing difficulties of achieving any sort of agreement during the drafting of the Universal Declaration, which continued until, and after, the adoption of article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both as to who can claim to be a minority and what this entails in terms of rights. It is first and foremost this back and forth on how wide a minority provision should be, in terms of those who can be considered a minority, and how deep, in the sense of the extent of the measures provided for their protection, which has made reaching a consensus on a definition so e lusive. 38. A clearer and more focused definition eventually followed in 1951 when the Sub-Commission submitted to the Commission a draft resolution that included the below wording (see E/CN.4/641-E/CN.4/Sub.2/140, annex I, resolution II), warning that many complexities had to be taken into account in each case: i. The term minority includes only those non-dominant groups in a population which possess and wish to preserve stable ethnic, religious or linguistic traditions or characteristics markedly different from those of the rest of the population; ii. Such minorities should properly include a number of persons sufficient by themselves to preserve such traditions or characteristics; and iii. Such minorities must be loyal to the State of which they are nationals. 39. Among other concerns, this definition was deemed by some members of the Commission to be too narrow (limited to nationals who needed to demonstrate their “loyalty” to the State), which meant this definition was also not retained, nor were any of the others in the ensuing decades. 4. The absence of a consensus over minorities and their rights 40. In addition to the hesitancy already mentioned, there has always been an underlying debate, if not always expressed as such, between two competing concepts regarding the protection of minorities: a broader one capable of encompassing a wider range of individuals (non-citizens, migrants, residents) but with a thinner layer of rights in relation to their language, religion or culture; and a narrower range of rights __________________ 10 19-11967 There were also political dimensions to these tensions which are beyond the scope of the present report. The discussions on a minority provision for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights occu rred during a period in history during which minority proposals were criticized in a debate with a strong “Cold War” flavour, and when the concerns over the “balkanization” of a country by granting rights to ethnic groups was combined with a fear of “Sovietization”. Some States, such as France and the United States of America, thus tended to oppose individualistic human rights without any concession to vulnerable groups such as minorities as a response to what was considered the instrumentalization of minority rights debates by the Soviet Union. See Patrick Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 135. 13/19