This unique book examines the international law of minority rights as it has been applied in the Balkans since the First World War, contending that this region, where minority rights issues are acute and abundant, holds the promise of an enforceable regime of international minority rights that would promote both human rights law and peace in the Balkans. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

This highly acclaimed book describes the situations for the minorities of former-Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania from a historical and contemporary perspective. The book also covers other ‘stateless’ minorities in the region including the Jews, Gypsies (Roma) and Vlahs. In an additional section written for this new edition, Hugh Poulton analyses how the turbulent developments in the Balkans during 1991 and 1992 continue to affect the minorities of the region. The new section examines: The disintegration of Yugoslavia The Bosnian crisis Vojvodina and the refugee problem Developments in Sandzak, Kosovo and Macedonia Nationalism in Greece

This text aims to provide an introductory study of linguistic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe taking into account historical development, present situation, language maintenance and shift as well as language and educational policies of each country included in this study.

What drives a state's choice to assimilate, accommodate or exclude ethnic groups within its territory? In this innovative work on the international politics of nation-building, Harris Mylonas argues that a state's nation-building policies toward non-core groups - individuals perceived as an ethnic group by the ruling elite of a state - are influenced by both its foreign policy goals and its relations with the external patrons of these groups. Through a detailed study of the Balkans, Mylonas shows that how a state treats a non-core group within its own borders is determined largely by whether the state's foreign policy is revisionist or cleaves to the international status quo, and whether it is allied or in rivalry with that group's external patrons. Mylonas injects international politics into the study of nation-building, building a bridge between international relations and the comparative politics of ethnicity and nationalism.

The situation in the Balkans, such as the solution to the status of Kosovo, is currently the largest international political problem in Europe, with the potential to burst into a world crisis regarding the Eastern - Western relations. On the other hand, a successful solution to the problem in the Balkans could serve as a model for solving the Muslim - Christian tensions elsewhere in the world. It is the intention of this book to contribute proposals for solutions to the problems of Balkans. The starting principle for the solutions to be effective is that they should come in a natural way from the people below and should not be enforced by the political elites from above. Based on self-determination of nations as a starting principle, they should encourage intra-regional cooperation among the regional entities (economic, cultural, sport, as a basis for political, social understanding and cooperation); secondly, accelerate their economic, political and social development and thirdly, as a final step enable the inclusion of the Balkan countries into the European Union.