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  5. International Protection of Minority Rights: View of Hersch Lauterpacht

Almanac of law. Issue 17 (2026), pages 295–303.

DOI: 10.33663/2524-017X-2026-17-295-303

Ivanova A. Yu.
International Protection of Minority Rights: View of Hersch Lauterpacht

This article depicts the international protection of minority rights through the prism of the intellectual legacy of Hersch Lauterpacht, one of the key figures in the development of modern international law. The focus is on his vision of international protection of minority rights, which, however, was not included in the final text of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The author analyses the protection of minority rights with equitable proportion in state funds, whereby minorities have the right to establish or maintain their own schools and cultural and religious institutions, creating significantly stronger guarantees of minority rights than those that exist in contemporary legal doctrine and legislative practice. The author believes that Lauterpacht derives this idea of proportion, or share in the common, from the philosophical ideas of Cicero, who derived not only common law but also a common share in justice.

The author considers the role of the issue of equality of minority groups and the understanding of its meaning in relation to the rights of individuals as members of the majority, which is closely related to the issues of legal protection of groups. Lauterpacht develops innovative approach to the idea of equality as something more than elementary non-discrimination, instead developing the idea of equality in law. To this end, he uses the concept of the selfhood, special essence or subjectivity of minorities.

The author analyses a classic example of a court decision on the rights of national minorities — the advisory opinion expressed by the Permanent Court of International Justice of the League of Nations in 1935 on schools for minorities in Albania, in which the Court distinguishes between de facto equality and equality in law and concludes that legal equality excludes any discrimination, while de facto equality may require different treatment in order to achieve a result that balances different situations.

The dominance of the individualistic concept of protecting minority rights — ensuring the protection of group rights almost exclusively through a specific individual member of such a group — creates conflicts and paradoxes in the legal regulation of the protection of minority rights. A look at the academic legacy of Hersch Lauterpacht reveals how this state of affairs came to be normalised and offers other perspectives for further research into the potential for the development of group human rights and minority rights in particular.

Keywords: group rights, minority rights, international law, Hersch Lauterpacht.

 References

  1. Lauterpacht, (1945). An International Bill of the Rights of Man. Columbia University Press.
  2. Human rights, the Charter of the United Nations and the International Bill of the Rights of Man: preliminary report / by Lauterpacht. New York: UN, 12 May 1948, 63 p. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/564241?v=pdf E/CN.4/89
  3. Lauterpacht, Н. (1950). International Law And Human London: Stevens & Sons Limited.
  4. Raic, David. Statehood and the Law of Self-Determination. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Nijhoff, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047403388
  5. Anna Meijknecht Minority Protection System between World War I and World War II In Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law OR Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2026. https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e848?prd=EPIL 
  6. Cicero, Marcus Tullius (1928). On the On the Laws. Translated by Clinton W. Keyes. Loeb Classical Library 213. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 
  7. Akvinskyi, Toma. Suma teolohii. Сh.ІІ-ІІ. Р. 58. Cyt: Mensching, Günther. (2004) Thomas von Aquin über Freiheit und Abhängigkeit. Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie Hannover fiph-Journal Nr. 4 / Herbst 2004. 
  8. Minority Schools in Albania, Advisory Opinion, 1935 P.C.I.J. (ser. A/B) No. 64 (Apr. 6). In Publications of the Permanent Court of International Justice Series A/B 64; Collection of Judgment, Orders and Advisory Opinions A.W. Sijthoff’s Publishing Company, Leyden, 1925 https://www.worldcourts.com/pcij/eng/decisions/1935.04.06_albania.htm 
  9. Declaration Concerning the Protection of Minorities in Albania (Geneva, October 2, 1921) 
  10. Kunz, Josef (1954) The Present Status of the International Law for the Protection of Minorities, 48 American Journal of International Law. 
  11. Moyn, Samuel (2010). The Last Utopia — Human Rights in Harvard University Press. 
  12. Allied And Associated Powers. (1919) Treaty with Poland. Treaty of peace between the United States of America, the British empire, France, Italy, and Japan and Poland. Signed at Versailles on. Washington, Govt. print. off. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/19026812/ 
  13. Stephen Velychenko, Валентин Кавунник The Versailles Treaty and the Ukrainian National Republic. The American Refusal to recognize Ukrainian Independence in https://uamoderna.com/history/the-versailles-treaty-and-the-ukrainian-national-republic-the-american-refusal-to-recognize-ukrainian-independence-in-1919/

    Дата першого надходження рукопису до видання: 25.02.2026
    Дата прийнятого до друку рукопису після рецензування: 09.04.2026
    Дата публікації: 30.04.2026

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