CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

JÁN KLUČKA CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ the opinion that this item should not be included in the agenda of the Commission at any session”. 28 This act de facto represents the end of the question of the validity of the Council of League minority treaties within the United Nations system.

Post Second World War Peace Treaties and Minorities (New conception of minorities)

The Peace Treaties of 10 February 1947 (with Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Italy, and Romania) contain provisions regarding the protection of human rights and, unlike those which ended the First World War, do not contain provisions concerning the protection of nationals over other minorities. The treaties refer only to individual human rights without distinction as to language (the Hungarian and Romanian Treaty) and generally forbid discrimination among citizens including linguistic discrimination. The previous minority protection system was abandoned and a general clause concerning the protection of human rights was inserted into the Peace Treaties due to American initiative and on the basis of American drafts. The Treaties do not contain an exhaustive enumeration of human rights and fundamental freedoms and the general clause mentions, by way of example, the freedom of expression, of press and publication, of religious worship, of political opinion, and of public meeting. Hungarian efforts to involve the regulation of minorities within peace treaties were unsuccessful as well as its demand to reunite all Hungarians with their mother state, and finally the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia was compelled to migrate to Hungary. The peace treaties granted to no minority any right comparable to those prevailing under the post- World War I agreements. According to the peace treaties: “The States were not obliged to take positive steps to protect rights of minorities and to protect discrimination among inhabitants”. 29 The British Foreign Secretary E. Bevin probably expressed the general way of thinking, in this respect, of the Western statesmen when, in June 1946, he gave the following explanations to the Hungarian Prime Minister statement: You ask that the Czechoslovak-Hungarian peace treaty should, in a separate section, insure the rights of the Hungarian minority, a method tried unsuccessfully after the First World War. Nationality complaints arose after that, too. It would be much better to insert into every peace treaty all the basic human rights which should be guaranteed to all men regardless of nationality. The United Nations would exercise jurisdiction over such measures in the peace treaties and could rush to aid those nationalities whose rights suffered injury. Far better that the countries of the United Nations exercise control over these rights than a single nation be left to keep to the letter of the treaty. 30 Also a number of other international agreements from the 1940s restoring international society to post-war Europe can be understood as evidence of a strong belief not to repeat the mistakes of 1919 regarding minorities. 28 Doc. E/CN.4/356 on 23 June 1949: “Report of the Fifth session of the Commission on Human Rights to the Economic and Social Council. (9 May – 20 June 1949)”. 29 KHAN, K. H.: The Protection of Minorities – Whether a Neglected Field? Athens Journal of Law , Vol. 2, No. 1, (January 2016), pp. 38. 30 KERTESZ, S. L.: Human Rights in the Peace Treaties, Law and Contemporary Problem, p. 633. Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.sk/&httpsredir=1&article=24 26&context=lcp.

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