Protecting Minorities: The League of Nations Treaties

The peacemakers of 1919 knew that the new borders left millions of people as national minorities, so they created an international system to protect them. Poland signed the first Minorities Treaty on 28 June 1919, the same day as the Treaty of Versailles, and similar obligations were imposed on Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and several other states. These treaties guaranteed equality before the law, freedom of religion and the right to use minority languages in some schools and courts.

The League of Nations could receive petitions from minorities, though not as courts of law. The system had real limits: it applied only to new or enlarged states, not to the great powers, which many smaller states saw as hypocritical, and enforcement was weak. In 1934 Poland renounced its obligations, and Nazi Germany later exploited minority grievances, especially among Germans in Czechoslovakia, to justify expansion. The treaties are nevertheless seen as an important early step toward international human rights protection.