der the protection of the League of Nations subsequent to 30 July 1921.
4. Treaty of Peace signed with Turkey in Lausanne on 24 July 1923: Articles 37-45 under the protection of the League of Nations subsequent to 26 September 1924.
The former Central Powers received guarantee in the treaties they signed stating that the new or territorially expanded countries concerned would take international obligations upon themselves with respect to and for the protection of the minorities disannexed from the Central Powers. Therefore, in exchange of the recognition of the independence of the new states and the renouncement of the disannexed territories, the Central Powers received guarantees on the protection of their former citizens, who became citizens of the new countries through the commitment of these new countries to obligations of international concern. The reason for the inclusion of these guarantees into the peace treaties was clear: this sought to ensure that even those states - Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey - could refer to the minorities treaties and file complaints with the League of Nations that were not signatories of these minorities treaties (since these established a legal relationship only between the new or territorially expanded states and the Allied and Associated Powers).
2.4. Special Treaties Concerning the Protection of Minorities
In general, treaties in this category were signed by two countries. Some of them would fall under the protection of the League of Nations, while others - although they were not directly part of the guarantee system as conceived in the narrower sense - served in part to expand the minorities treaties, peace treaties and minority declarations, and in part to include other states into the international system of minority protection conceived in a broader sense. This is one of the reasons why we can consider the twenty years between the two world wars the classic period of direct minority protection. Besides the system of international treaties under the protection of the League of Nations, a few multilateral and several bilateral documents were adopted [II] which, besides the regulation of the specific contractual object, incorporated clauses concerning minority protection as well.
[I] Treaties under the guarantee of the League of Nations:
1. Agreement between Sweden and Finland concerning the Åland Islands, unanimously approved by the Council of League of Nations on 27 June 1921.
2. Geneva Convention on Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland, signed on 15 May 1922: similar to the preceding documents, it was adopted with the assistance of the League Nations, and passed under its protection subsequent to 20 June 1922.
[II] Treaties independent of the guarantee of the League of Nations:
3. Treaty of Brünn between Austria and Czechoslovakia on citizenship and education, signed on 7 June 1920.
4. Treaty between Poland and Czechoslovakia (Warsaw, 23 April 1925). It contains primarily provisions concerning the minorities' educational affairs.
5. Treaty between Yugoslavia and Romania concerning the mutual protection of the Romanian minority in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav minority in Romania (Belgrade, 10 March 1933).
6. Treaty between Bulgaria and Greece (Neuilly, 27 November 1919) on reciprocal emigration and immigration. (A further protocol was signed on 29 September 1924 on the protection of Greek minorities in Bulgaria and, on the part of the League of Nations, Bulgarian minorities in Greece. It was signed by the representatives of Bulgaria and Greece, the president of the Council, and the secretary-general.).
7. Treaty between the Allied Powers and Lithuania (Paris, 8 May 1924), on the legal status of the Memel region annexed to Lithuania.
8. Convention between the Free City of Danzig and Poland (9 November 1920), in which Danzig pledges to apply the provisions of the Polish Minorities Treaty with respect to its minorities.
2.5. Minorities Declarations
So far, we have discussed the minorities treaties and the relevant chapters of the peace treaties from among the sources of 