Minority treaties

There was continuing debate about human rights during the 1920s and 1930s, but it was stimulated less by Japan's failed proposal concerning racial equality, and more by the minority treaties imposed on the new nation states created after the end of the First World War. The first was negotiated with Poland in 1919, and by the early 1930s, twenty-four treaties or other agreements had been ratified. They were drawn up to deal with the problems which arose in Eastern Europe as a consequence of the break up of the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires and subsequent creation of nation-states from diverse and geographically mixed populations, all of whom could have appealed, with some justice, to Woodrow Wilson's promise of self-determination.

The great powers feared that persecution of minorities and irredentism could spark future international conflict. The treaties provided for the protection of individuals against discrimination by the states in question and a number of group rights, relating to language, education and cultural institutions. Minority rights had little chance of support, however, when pitched against the overpowering idea of national sovereignty. A Swiss delegate observed in 1920 that while a policy based on respect for minorities had the full sympathy of the League of Nations, the ‘sovereignty of states’ was its fundamental principle.

In 1935, the Permanent Court of International Justice declared that the treaties had two main objectives.