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16 - Minorities, Refugees and Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2025

By
Momchil Milanov  and
León Castellanos-Jankiewicz
General editor
Randall Lesaffer
Edited by
Robert Kolb  and
Momchil Milanov
Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
Robert Kolb
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Momchil Milanov
Affiliation:
International Court of Justice
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Summary

The chapter argues that post-1945 international human rights law cannot be understood without accounting for the interwar period and some core elements of human rights discourse which existed at the time. Whereas classical histories of human rights have focused on genealogy and teleology to spell out the advent of rights universalism, more recent work has anchored the origins of human rights in national political communities. Accounting for these new historiographies, this chapter distinguishes between nineteenth-century human rights discourse and post–Second World War international human rights law. Elements of the former and antecedents of the latter can be found in the interwar period, in particular in the legal regimes for the protection of refugees and minorities. Although it analyses the two regimes separately, it articulates their points of convergence and situates them in the context of rising nationalism and the advent of the individual as a subject of international law.

Keywords

minoritiesrefugeeshuman rightsnationalismnationality and citizenshipstatelessnessMandelstamindividual as subject of international law
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 501 - 554
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Amorosa, Paolo, ‘Pioneering international women’s rights? The US National Woman’s Party and the 1933 Montevideo Equal Rights Treaties’, European Journal of International Law, 30 (2019) 415–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aust, Helmut, ‘From diplomat to academic activist: André Mandelstam and the history of human rights’, European Journal of International Law, 25 (2014) 1105–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cabanes, Bruno, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casey, Christopher, Nationals Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fink, Carole, Defending the Rights of Others. The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006).Google Scholar
Frank, Matthew, Making Minorities History (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, Matthew, and Reinisch, Jessica, Refugees in Europe 1919–1959. A Forty Years’ Crisis (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic 2019).Google Scholar
Holborn, Louise, ‘The legal status of political refugees, 1920–1938’, American Journal of International Law, 32 (1938) 680–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kévonian, Dzovinar, La danse du pendule. Les juristes et l’internationalisation des droits de l’homme, 1920–1939 (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne 2021).Google Scholar
Kévonian, Dzovinar, Réfugiés et diplomatie humanitaire. Les acteurs européens et la scène proche-orientale pendant l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne 2004).Google Scholar
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Parlett, Kate, The Individual in the International Legal System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Wheatley, Natasha, ‘Spectral legal personality in interwar international law: on new ways of not being a state’, Law and History Review, 35 (2017) 753–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Elizabeth, ‘The legal status of Russian refugees, 1921–1936’, Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, 1 (2017) 18–39.Google Scholar

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