International and national legal issues of minority protection

• Published in: Науковий вісник Ужгородського національного університету. Серія Право Vol. 4; no. 89; pp. 251 - 264
• Main Author: Shamsan, R. T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 12.08.2025
• ISSN: 2307-3322; 2664-6153
• DOI: 10.24144/2307-3322.2025.89.4.37

Protection of minorities is one of the main and most important issues of the entire world community. For a number of reasons, including as a result of historical events or certain situations, each person may be a representative of a minority. Minorities often face multiple forms of discrimination, which causes marginalization, violence and isolation. The desire of these social groups that do not belong to the dominant part of the population to preserve their cultural, religious or ethnic characteristics arose simultaneously with the emergence of nation states. The problems of minorities, from the definition of the concept to the establishment of the rights of their individual and the creation of mechanisms for the protection and implementation of these rights, are fundamental, important and pressing problems of human rights, which have not only a legal, political, but also an important humanitarian nature, which the international community has been trying to resolve for many years. This article analyzes all these aspects, outlines the essence of the problem, and notes that the issue of protecting minorities initially took on a religious and political dimension as a result of the devastating wars in Europe between Catholics and Protestants. Then it quickly acquired an ethnic, national and linguistic dimension, as well as a legal and legal political framework with the adoption of a number of international agreements on minority rights and their protection, especially after the establishment of the League of Nations and the UN. The article explains the main reasons for the lack of a single, generally accepted definition of the concept of a minority, and points out that UN documents most often use the division of minorities into national, ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic groups, which in the legal sense are equivalent phenomena and lead to the formation of concepts of the same legal order. The article finds out that without the necessary measures and guarantees of states, the protection of the identity of minorities is impossible. The article also describes the domestic legislation of Ukraine in the field of minority rights protection and some scientifically based proposals. The theoretical generalizations and conclusions of this article may be useful in the development of legislation on minorities, in the educational process on «International Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law» and in improving the qualifications of civil servants.