Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter IV. Safeguarding the Rights of the Baltic Minorities. Paper presented to the Council of the Federation of the League of Nations Societies at Vienna, October 1921
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any satisfaction. It reads very well that „in case of difference of opinion
about questions of law or of fact between the interested State and
another State, this difference will be considered as having an
international character, and that in accordance with Article 14 of the Pact
of the League of Nations, the question would then be liable to be
brought before the Permanent Court of Justice at the Hague.“[1] But
what State would care to spoil its friendly relations with another State
„pour les beaux yeux“ of a foreign racial minority? No doubt we are
here confronted with, a sort of half-way house, an abortive compromise
endangering political interests and at the same time unsatisfying to the
most elementary requirements of justice. The minorities must have
real international safeguards which should be created before this
hitherto unsettled question threatens to involve Europe in another
conflagration. The following two propositions would attain this end:
(1) Permanent Commissions of Control to be appointed by the
League of Nations in Latvia and Eesti, empowered to supervise the
application of the minorities’ rights in these countries, to receive
complaints from the minorities and bring them to the notice of the Council
of the League of Nations and to take proceedings before the
International Tribunal of Justice at the Hague.
(2) That the minorities of each country be admitted as public
Corporations in the general system of the League of Nations, invested with
the right to plead before the permanent International Tribunal of Justice
at the Hague.
In setting forth these suggestions, it is well to note that the fifth
Conference of the Federation of Associations of the League of Nations
at Geneva in June 1921, decided to „invite the Council of the League
of Nations to establish a permanent Commission to study any reports
on complaints addressed to the League of Nations concerning the
non-observance of minorites’ rights and the measures to be taken in such
an eventuality.“ In support of this idea, at the tenth session of the
Council of the League of Nations in October 1921, Professor Murray,
the delegate for South Africa, introduced an analogous proposal for
creating a permanent Commission for supervising the observance of
the minorities’ treaties. Modern writers of repute on minorities’ rights
have repeatedly emphasised the importance of this consideration. The
Bohemian, Professor Rudolf von Laun, stated that the right of
minorities could not be safe-guarded except by international guarantee and
with the right to appeal to an international court. Likewise, Dr. de
Auer from Budapest in his paper read at the session of the International
Law Association at the Hague in October 1921, vindicates the right
of racial and religious minorities to take proceedings before the
International Tribunal at The Hague.
The chief objection against such a procedure lies in the fact that
the minorities are not adequately organised, nor are they circumscribed
as independent States, they are therefore unable to plead as a
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