ABSTRACT
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the international institution generally acknowledged in recent years to have had most success in establishing new norms in the promotion of national minority rights. Between 1989 and 1991 this inter-governmental forum took qualitative steps forward with regard to normative standard setting and established the principle that national minority issues were a legitimate international concern, not merely an internal affair of the state concerned. At Helsinki in 1992, the OSCE’s establishment of the post of High Commissioner on National Minorities was even more radical and unique in scope, as it established an early warning and international conflict resolution mechanism that could operate independently, without the consent of the OSCE member states. The framework of normative standards established by the OSCE has now become enshrined in international law with the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, ratified in 1995.
