Liga Națiunilor și minoritățile naționale
The League of Nations and national minorities

Summary/Abstract: The result of a thorough documentation work in the UN Library of Geneva and the League of Nations Archives, the work presents the international system for the protection of minorities under the aegis of the League of Nations, a protection that was directed to certain minorities, which were in a specific situation and exclusively located in a certain geographic area, that is, Central Europe and the Balkans. The legal bases of this peace agreement in Europe did not establish erga omnes international norms with regard to the status of all minorities on the continent. Nevertheless, the international protection of minorities under the aegis of the League of Nations represents a genuine historical experiment with important consequences for the contemporary world, for the way minority issues are approached and dealt with, and for the outlook and the practice of States in relation to the role of international organizations. An analysis of the League's case law in terms of minorities proves that without the intervention of the League's Council in favour of the establishment of a sui generis procedure and the creation of specialized bodies in the framework of the Secretariat General to continuously monitor and solve concrete cases by predominantly political means of negotiation and direct persuasion, with the direct support of the authorities of the respective States, minorities' protection under the League's aegis would have become inoperative. Involvement of the League's other institutions – the Assembly and the Permanent Court of International Justice – with the minorities issue contributed to the development of the international concepts in the field and proved that, in terms of history, the issue could no longer be neglected later at the level of the European and the worldwide cooperation of States. In terms of the international law, the contribution made by this international organization can be defined as follows: limitation of the international protection to those minorities indicated in the special treaties and declarations; taking into account only the persons belonging to racial, religious and linguistic minorities; promotion of equality in rights also with regard to individual opportunities by adequate measures in fields with special requirements such as education; prohibition of the possibility for the State to challenge invocation of the status of person belonging to a minority; promotion of minority rights as individual, not collective rights; acknowledgement of the competence of the international jurisdiction of that time to issue advisory opinions and to rule in terms of minorities.

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