CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

JÁN KLUČKA CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ groups may exercise fully and effectively all their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and finally according to Article 1, states shall protect the existence of minorities within their respective territories and adopt appropriate legislative and other measures to achieve this end. It is worthy to add that the right of minorities to exist in their physical sense is sustained by the Genocide Convention of 1948. Within the context of the international human rights system the rights of specific categories of persons are supplementary to the universally recognized rights of every person, and the Declaration does not to weaken the enjoyment of universal human rights for persons who do not belong to a minority nor for persons who belong to a minority. (Article 8, paras. 1 and 2 of the Declaration). 43 The beginning of the 1990s is characterized by the increasing number of international documents dealing with different aspects of the protection of minorities. It is to be noted inter alia that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) incorporated statements of minority rights in all official documents which formed the basis of the organization’s activities at this time. These included the main OSCE human rights standard setting text of this period, the Copenhagen Document (1990), as well as the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (1990), the Geneva Report on National Minorities (1991), the Moscow Document (1991), the Helsinki Document (1992), and the Budapest Document (1994). The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was adopted in 1992 and the European Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in 1995. These documents and treaties concerning minority rights affirm inter alia : the inviolability of existing boundaries within the nation-states system and the supreme authority of states over their citizens regardless of whether or not those citizens were members of national minorities. The national minority rights therefore continue to be held in check by the traditional principles of international relations – state sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of borders and the like. The main diplomatic challenges for international bodies as the UN, OSCE, CoE in their minority rights standard setting initiatives was not to promote minority rights at the expense of sovereignty but instead to formulate a response to national minority demands that was on the one hand strong enough to prevent minority demands for political independence while at the same time reassuring those states which possessed such communities that their sovereign powers and territorial integrity were not being challenged. 44 The importance of these documents (of both of legal and non legal nature) is obvious because they confirm, strengthen, and stabilize the global minimum standard embodied in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, and with respect to the bilateral treaties concerning the protection of minorities, they at the same time provide an important reference point.

43 For more details see: Commentary of the Working Group on Minorities to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to the National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. UN Doc. E/ CN.4/Sub.2/AC.5/2005/2, 4 April 2005, pp. 1-21. 44 PREECE, J. J.: “Self Determination, Minority Rights and Failed States”. Available at: http://www.comm.ucsb.edu/faculty/mstohl/failed_states/1999/papers/Jackson-Preece.html.

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