Protection of Minorities and the Prohibition of Discrimination: The Ohrid Framework Agreement
Professor Dr Elena Andreevska

Abstract
The protection of ethnic, religious and linguistic groups is one of the oldest concerns of international law. Nowadays there is no doubt that the need for protection of minorities under internal and international law has perhaps never been as urgent as in our time. The main aim of this paper is to show that establishing minority rights appears to be one of the more promising approaches to this problem. This is especially important for the Balkan countries where national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, used to be and still are the cause for international and internal state political and even armed conflicts. The Ohrid Framework Agreement is today a classic case of conflict prevention which gave the Republic of Macedonia a chance in 2001 to avoid destructive divisions and to develop as a democracy.

Full Text: PDF