Definicja mniejszości narodowych i etnicznych w polskim prawodawstwie na tle rozwiązań międzynarodowych

Abstract

Guarantees regarding the protection of the rights of national and ethnic minorities became the subject of interest of the international community after the end of World War II. It was then decided that providing these social groups with the opportunity to cultivate their identity, separate from that of the rest of society, should constitute one of the pillars of a mature democ-racy. It is also a kind of security pillar, as nationality misunderstandings have often been the source of international conflicts. For this reason, appropriate guarantees for national and ethnic minorities have been incorporated into the international system of human rights protection. The basic issue is un-doubtedly the way of defining national and ethnic minorities, which has not been unified on the basis of international law. Granting certain guarantees to minority communities under international law does not always involve specifying their definitions in acts of international law, leaving the question of such determination to individual states. The publication attempts to pres-ent the way of defining national and ethnic minorities in the literature and the differences that are marked in the understanding of the concept of “nation” and “ethnic group.” Characterized is the way of defining these social groups in legal acts adopted within the universal system of human rights protection and within the regional systems of protection of minority rights, operating within the Council of Europe, OSCE, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Central European Initiative and the European Union. Finally, an attempt was made to characterize and evaluate Polish solutions in the field of protection and the way of defining national and ethnic minorities on a normative basis, also taking into account the problems of the Silesian community that aspires to be recognized as a national minority. The con-struction of definitions adopted by the Polish legislator was also compared with international standards in this regard.