Dalla protezione delle minoranze ai diritti umani: una prospettiva storica.

In the article the author analizes how the protection of minorities, one of main issues of the new international organization the League of Nations (1919), has changed during the thirties until the transformation of the its meaning in the concept of Human Rights after the second World War. In the interwar period the issue of minorities was particularly serious in the eastern Europe where the formation of new states born after the collapse of the three former empires (austro-hungarian, russian and german) caused ethnic and religious conflicts. In this situation the league of nation decided to dictate to the new states the signing of international treaties obliging them to respect the cultural and religious specifities of the minorities. When the Nazism conquered, politically, the Germany and started the policies of annihilation of the jews the issue became more complicated: how is it possible to defend the citizens from their own state? From this point onwards after the second world war the main issue became the defence of human rights and not only of the rights of the minorities. Nowadays when different groups of people coming from other parts of the world in Europe find huge problems of integration in the European societies, the political issue seems again to be the defence of rights of the minorities.