NATIONAL MINORITIES AND THE RIGHT TO SELFDETERMINATION

Abstract

The political situation of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century is characterized by the increasing influence of the ethno-national factor on the political processes taking place both in individual States and within the international community. There is growing antagonism among peoples within multinational States, accompanied by violent civil wars and refugee flows. Yugoslavia and Russia are striking examples of such conflicts. Along with the integration processes, which resulted in the creation of political, economic and social institutions at the supranational level, there is a trend of ethnicism of the European political space. Increasingly, national minorities are seeking to establish their own States or want to join the ancestral state. International security and the world were depending on the decision of problems of national minorities, international organizations and all stakeholders need to develop new approaches to the reconciliation of national interests. To understand the principle of free self- determination of peoples in the context of the rights of national minorities. The issue of the right of national minorities to self-determination is relevant and not indisputable in international law. The solution to the problem posed questions to international organizations, the answers to which were ambiguous as to whether there was a difference between the right of a people to selfdetermination and the right of a minority to self-determination. Whether a people in the position of a national minority could enjoy the right to self-determination. If so, to what extent, what legal and political problems may arise in its implementation.