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58 Nordic J. Int'l L. 188 (1989)
The United Nations and Protection of Minorities

handle is hein.journals/nordic58 and id is 194 raw text is: The United Nations and Protection of Minorities By R ussel Lawrence Barsh * The question of according special legal status and protection to minorities in international law has been the subject of controversy since the League of Na- tions was organized in 1919. In basic outline, the issues and arguments have re- mained the same. States recognize the practical necessity of addressing minority aspirations, but fear that any acknowledgement of minorities as groups, with collective political rights, will undermine State power. The League of Nations U.S. President Wilson suggested ensuring the equality of racial or national mi- norities in the Covenant of the League.' Although his proposal was rejected as over-broad, the League subsequently arranged for the protection of particu- lar minorities in the Baltic, Central Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East, through the negotiation and supervision of twenty-three multilateral treaties. These treaties guaranteed minorities' equal treatment under national law, as well as their right to retain their own educational and cultural institutions. In 1935, the Permanent Court of International Justice concluded that equality and autonomy were both essential and complementary elements of ensuring the sur- vival of minorities.' As a result of Nazi Germany's use of the rights and reunification of minor- ities as a pretext for aggression, however, minority rights fell into disfavor by the 1940s, and minorities were widely viewed as a menace to peace.3 Thus no reference to minorities was made in the Charter of the United Nations, most States preferring the conception of human rights, which is at one and the same time more Statist and more individualistic. Within a few years, however, minority fights had become a sub-category of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights From the start, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights was expressly author- ized to make recommendations on the protection of minorities,4 and in 1947 it established a Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. The Secretariat suggested that discrimination, in the context of this dual mandate, referred to the right to equality of treat- ment, while protection comtemplates a right to freedom from undesired as- similation .1 A number of proposals were made to include some protection for minorities in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yugoslavia proposed, in part, that: * Four Directions Council, Seattle.

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