itemized minority law. Besides these, certain East Central European countries issued unilateral declarations in front of the League of Nations. The Assembly did not consider these declarations as a general criterion of a state's admission in the organisation - although Lord Robert Cecil, representative of South Africa proposed exactly that. The Assembly expressed its desire (!) only with respect to certain countries. More exactly, it recommended that they take appropriate measures concerning the protection of minorities in the case of their admission into the organisation:
"In the case when the Baltic and Caucasian states and Albania should be admitted into the League of Nations, the Assembly recommends that they take measures for the protection of minorities in conformity with the general principles established in the minorities treaties, and come to an agreement with the Council about the method of their implementation."
1. Albanian Declaration on the Protection of Minorities (2 October 1921, under the protection of the League of Nations subsequent to 17 February 1922). It complied with the wish of the Assembly: the text of the Declaration corresponded with the relevant provisions of the minorities treaties.
2. Lithuanian Declaration on the Protection of Minorities (12 May 1922, under the protection of the League of Nations subsequent to 11 December 1923). This too complied with the Assembly Recommendation.
3. Latvian Declaration on the Protection of Minorities (7 July 1923, under the protection of the League of Nations subsequent to 1 September 1923).
4. The Estonian Declaration on the Protection of Minorities (17 September 1923) is based on a resolution, in which the Council of the League of Nations endorsed the report of an Estonian representative on the situation of minorities in Estonia on 28 August 1923.
5. Iraq issued a minorities declaration on 30 May 1932 (Articles 1-10 under the protection of the League of Nations subsequent to the same date).
Accordingly, the above-mentioned five declarations, just as the similar provisions of the minorities treaties, fell under the protection of the League of Nations.
2.6. The Legal Nature of the Sources of Substantive Minority Law
The legal nature of the enumerated sources requires a short explanation. They are legislative acts that refer to a legal relationship between state and its minorities, which formerly belonged in the sphere of domestic legislation. This is a known phenomenon in international law: a state voluntarily curbs its own sovereignty concerning the protection of minorities when, in the form of international commitments, it pledges to behave in a certain way concerning the issue of a given regulation. It is characteristic of legislative international treaties that they contain reciprocal undertaking of obligations. Sources of itemised minority law differ from the general practice in this respect. The parties pledge reciprocity concerning their minorities in the Convention on Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland, and the treaties between Austria and Czechoslovakia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, and Bulgaria and Greece. As opposed to this, the other minorities treaties, the relevant provisions of the peace treaties, and the declarations contain obligations undertaken by the states concerned unilaterally, while the other party (the Allied and Associated Powers) does not make a similar pledge concerning the treatment of their minorities. The resolution of the seeming contradiction, which stretches between the nature of the theoretically voluntarily pledged international commitments and the unilateral character of the above-mentioned treaties, is to be found in the circumstances of the adoption of these international legal acts and the need for some solution of the minority issue.
3. The Territorial Effect of the Minorities Treaties
The territorial effect of minorities treaties varies in extent. As a general rule, the provisions of the international treaties in this category extend not only to the territories acquired by way of the peace