Vacuum in Protection of National Minorities Reported by Legal Experts of U.N.

The whole system of protection of minorities established after World War I has ceased to exist and no new system relating specific cally to the protection of minorities has yet replaced it, in the opinion of the United Nations Legal Department. The opinion is handed down in a comprehensive review of the validity of past undertakings concerning minorities which the U.N. Secretariat published today.

The system, encompassing 18 treaties, conventions and League of Nations resolutions regarding minorities protection in 17 states and territories, was overthrown by the second world war, according to the U.N. legal experts. The assumption that these undertakings have ceased to exist, the U.N. document declares, was implicit in the various treaties signed after World War II.

A number of the treaties of 1919, such as those with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Rumania, included specific provisions covering Jewish minorities. None of these can now be considered legally valid, the U.N. says. In the case of agreements which carried League guarantees, the document notes that the U.N. General Assembly has not yet decided the question of U.N. inheritance of all League commitments. A new philosopay, looking toward “general and universal protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms,” is emerging to replace the former emphasis on special provisions in favor of minorities, the U.N. experts observed.

The Secretariat today also issued a document summarizing the history of the ritht of petition to international bodies, a problem with which the Human Rights Commission, now in session, must deal in working cut a system of implementation for the forthcoming Covenant of Human Rights. The document shows that the right of individual petition, which dates back to the 17th century, was recognized by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 (which acted upon, among others, a petition from the Jewish community of Frankfurt-on-Main and from a representative of the Jowish people in the Hanseatic cities) and by a number of international congresses which followed.

The review also records the specific mechanism for individual right of petition set up by the League of Nations for Upper Silesia. It notes furthermore that the U.N. General Assembly has recognized this right on several occasions and that it is provided for by the International Labor Organization. Since this right was specifically excluded from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and will in all likelihood be excluded from the covenant, the inevitable implication of this U.N. document is that the world organization is moving backwards on the question of right of petition.