Abstract
International law regularly operates with the term minorities and related concepts when recognizing group-specific rights, without setting out definitions of the protected groups. However, while the law itself is largely silent on the issue of conceptualization, the practice of monitoring organs can provide guidance in this regard. Therefore, this paper draws on the doctrinal and comparative legal analysis of the case-law of UN human rights treaty bodies. Specifically, concluding observations are analysed in the context of the Alpine-Adriatic-Pannonian area, including Slovenia and its neighbours as well as other states of the former Yugoslavia. The paper aims to show the emerging consensus within the approaches of the individual treaty bodies and to identify elements of the minority concept which appear systematically in the practice of all treaty bodies in the region under examination, thus contributing to the conceptualization of minorities in the framework of international human rights law.