The Savoy Government Ministry of Home Affairs Ref. Ref. N° Savoy Affairs Department In the Official Journal of the French Republic Subject : Seventh Forum on Minorities – UN Geneva – 25-26 November 2014 I hereby represent the people of Savoy, a thousand-year-old nation living in the territory bordering Geneva, annexed by France 150 years ago. After physical assaults on our ancestors in 1871 and 1914, we increasingly experience psychological violence and a systematic refusal to apply our rights acquired in international treaties, such as the suppression of our nationality, history, language and neutrality gained from Swiss after renouncing Geneva to the Swiss Confederation in 1815… Such psychological violence is omnipresent in Savoy because the authorities deny the recognition to the flag offered by Malta in 1147 for services provided. They forbid us to commemorate our deads during official ceremonies (11 November). Omnipresent gendarmes control us even a few times a day, they interrogate us in car parks for hours, follow us all day long, refuse to recognise our Savoy identity, requisition our documents and provide false arguments to establish procedures and bring us to experienced judges who favour the national law instead of the international. Prefects choose authoritarianism over dialogue. However, isn’t the right to self-determination stipulated in the French Constitution? Every person is influenced by the dominating country. Democracy tolerates psychological violences that are often much slyer than a dictatorship. If a small nation is united with a bigger one, the mutual relation should be based on equality, otherwise it means submission. Would an annexation become gradually synonym of submission? In order to better help the minorities, the UN should define the concept of a people or to allow those recognised by the UNPO to become observers within the UN. This way, minorities would obtain international protection in order to prevent any form of physical or psychological abuse, and to allow the self-determination involving three parties: recognition of a minority, acknowledgement of their claims, and arbitration between the minority and the State or the dominant nation. There are no small or big peoples, there are just peoples, and the mutual recognition is the only way for them to coexist. Integration does not mean renunciation of the past but acceptance of a common future built together rather than through one group using power over the other. If integration is not possible, separation should be the solution, since the ultimate goal is always to respect each other.