affect persons belonging to racial, religious or linguistic minorities, constitute obligations of international concern and shall be placed under the guarantee of the League of Nations. They shall not be modified without the assent of a majority of the Council of the League of Nations. The Allied and Associate Powers represented in the Council hereby agree not to withhold their assent from any modification in these Articles which is in due form assented to by a majority of the Council of the League of Nations. [...] agrees that any Member of the Council of the League of Nations shall have the right to bring to the attention of the Council any infraction, or any danger of infraction, of any of these obligations, and that the Council may thereupon take such action and give such direction as it may deem proper and effective in the circumstances. [...] further agrees that any difference of opinion as to questions of law or fact arising out of these Articles between the [...] Government and any one of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers or any other Power, a Member of the Council of the League of Nations, shall be held to be a dispute of an international character under Article 14 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The [...] Government hereby consents that any such dispute shall, if the other party thereto demands, be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The decision of the Permanent Court shall be final and shall have the same force and effect as an award under Article 13 of the Covenant." 
The provisions included in the section above can be grouped around three logical units:
a) Legal provisions that affect persons belonging to racial, religious or linguistic minorities, constituted obligations of international concern ("obligations d'intérêt international"), and were placed under the guarantee of the League of Nations. This meant that the provisions could not be modified without the assent of a majority of the Council of the League of Nations. Modification could take place only with the assent of the parties, and the fact that the assent of the Council was required did not change this; it only limited the rights of the parties.
b) Protection meant that the observance of the provisions in concern was under the continuous supervision of the League of Nations. Accordingly, any Member of the Council of the League of Nations had the right to bring to the attention of the Council any infraction, or any danger of infraction, of any of these obligations, following which the Council could give such direction as it deemed proper and effective.
c) Finally, any difference of opinion as to questions of law or fact arising out of these Articles between the parties or any other Power, a Member of the Council of the League of Nations, was held to be a dispute of an international character. Any such dispute, if the other party demanded, was to be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, the decision of which was final. Accordingly, the minorities treaties and declarations on the protection of minorities established two kinds of procedures: one before the Council of the League of Nations and one before the Permanent Court of International Justice. In both cases only the members of the Council were entitled to initiate such proceedings: they disposed of the procedure and, according to Article 11 of the Covenant, the given procedure had the legal nature of a matter that was "declared a matter of concern to the whole League".
However, these few provisions were far from enough for the comprehensive regulation of the procedure of the Council. That would be elaborated by the organisation itself in only a few years, by 1925 approximately. Before the introduction of the petition procedure, it is important to indicate certain points that were kept in mind throughout the elaboration of the petition procedure.
Minorities did not have legal personality internationally. Their rights were obligations of international concern to be fulfilled by certain states. Minorities were not the subjects of these ob