Minority rights focus in the United Nations 3 Among the protections commonly included were the rights to equality and non-discrimination; the right to citizenship if a person commonly resident in a new State (or a State with new borders) so wished; the right to use one’s own language in public and private; the right of minorities to establish their own religious, cultural, charitable and educational institutions; an obligation on the State to provide an “equitable” level of financial support to minority schools, in which instruction at the primary level would be in the minority’s mother tongue; and entrenchment of laws protecting minorities so that they could not be changed by subsequent statutes. Although the supervisory system established by the League was political rather than legal and did not permit aggrieved minorities to engage States on an equal or adversarial footing, it did provide certain oversight through the League’s Secretariat. Almost any person or group could bring a situation to the attention of the League and the Secretariat could also investigate situations on its own initiative. The ultimate sanction was public discussion in the League Council and, potentially, the adoption of a resolution calling upon a State to take particular action. Some treaties, such as that which created the Free City of Danzig, provided for access to the Permanent Court of International Justice (the predecessor of today’s International Court of Justice), and the Court delivered a number of important advisory opinions on minority issues.2 Although the scope of minority treaties was limited – they applied only to a small number of defeated or new States and there was no agreement that minority rights were universally applicable – their significance should not be underestimated. They had concrete implications for minorities within the State, and they constituted an important step in the development of international minority rights and human rights law. In particular, the acceptance of the principle of international interest in and supervision of the fate of minorities within States was a major breakthrough in the development of international law, which in some ways presaged the later promotion of broader human rights by the United Nations. The United Nations The Charter of the United Nations makes no mention of minority rights per se, but it does include several provisions on human rights, including Article 1 (3), which identifies as one of the purposes of the United Nations the achievement of international cooperation “in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”. In 1948, the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which articulated the content of human rights in much greater detail and remains one of the most important international human rights documents: its anti-discrimination provisions and other articles are of central importance also for persons belonging to minorities. While the General Assembly was unable to agree on any formulation in the Declaration concerning minority rights per se, it did note that the United Nations “cannot remain indifferent to the fate of minorities”. It added, in the same resolution that proclaimed the Universal Declaration, that it was “difficult to adopt a uniform solution for this complex and delicate question [of minorities], which has special aspects in each State in which it arises.”3 See, in particular, Permanent Court of International Justice, Rights of Minorities in Upper Silesia (Minority Schools), Germany v. Poland, Judgment No. 12, 26 April 1928; Questions Relating to Settlers of German Origin in Poland, Advisory Opinion, Series B No. 6, 10 September 1923; The Greco-Bulgarian “Communities”, Advisory Opinion, Series B No. 17, 31 July 1930; Access to German Minority Schools in Upper Silesia, Advisory Opinion, Series A./B. No. 40, 15 May 1931; Minority Schools in Albania, Advisory Opinion, Series A./B. No. 62, 6 April 1935. 2 Resolution 217 C(III). 3