Religio-nationalist minorities and the development of minority rights law

The end of the Soviet period in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans has seen the open development of tensions in the region based on the presen ce of minority groups in states trying to reassert their individual identit y. There has been a flurry of international activity by various organizatio ns to establish minority rights standards and to ensure their implementatio n. It is the thesis of this article that the idea of minority rights in int ernational law stems originally from the treatment of religious minorities, and subsequently minorities defined in other terms, in this region, and th at modern mechanisms to guarantee minority rights can be seen to have devel oped from the perceived need to make minority rights a matter of internatio nal concern rather than one solely for the kin-state. The various mechanism s in use now directly build upon the perceived successes and failures of ea rlier systems.