The United Nations Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, which is now in session here, today began a debate on the question of securing special measures for the protection of national minorities.
Richard Hiscocks, British delegate, pointed out that a clear distinction must be made between “victims of discrimination” and “minorities.” The former require nothing more than equal treatment — they were the individuals catered to by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; on the other hand, minorities were groups of people who because of history and fate found themselves in certain countries, most often where they did not want to be. Minorities needed not only equal treatment but special protection and privileges such as their own schools, he said. He declared that “every different minority presents a specific problem” and that therefore any universal recommendations would have to be very flexible.
M. Sorensen of Denmark, chairman of the group, agreed that it was impossible to give a uniform answer to the question of what protection minorities should have. Minority problems could only be solved by judging each particular case on its own merits, he declared.
Earlier today the Subcommission adopted by a vote of five to four with one abstention a resolution deciding to suspend for the time being further examination of “measures to be taken for the cessation of any advocacy of national racial or religious hostility that constitutes an incitement to hatred and violence jointly or separately.”
At the same time, however, the resolution “invites the Secretariat to study the legislative and judicial practices of various countries, by collecting information concerning the effects of the national legislation in force in those countries on the solution of the problem, so as to enable the Subcommission, at its seventh session, to consider the formulation of practical recommendations on the problem,” Members voting against it were Chile, the Philippines, Poland and the USSR. The United Kingdom abstained.
The Subcommission also rejected by a vote of two in favor to five against, with two abstentions a draft resolution submitted by the USSR which would have recommended that the General Assembly condemn propaganda of “racial and national exclusiveness, hatred and contempt” and call “upon governments to take without delay legislative and other action to put a stop to such propaganda.”
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