ABSTRACT
The Second World War is synonymous, particularly in Eastern Europe, with genocide, ethnic cleansing and displacement of peoples. Forced population movements in the region did not cease in 1945, but were endorsed in the immediate post-war period, even by the Western democracies, as a solution to the nationality conflicts that had proved so intractable between 1919 and 1939. In the aftermath of the war, the Western victor powers subsumed the concept of minority rights within that of individual human rights, as promulgated most notably by the United Nations. In 1953, the recently established Council of Europe endorsed the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In affirming that the liberties secured by the Convention were applicable to all, this document made no specific provisions for belonging to a national minority, beyond the obvious safeguards against differential treatment on the grounds of ethnicity. 1
