The Protection of national minorities and of the rights and freedoms of persons belonging to those minorities forms an integral part of the international protection of human rights, and as such falls within the scope of international co-operation.

The Republic of Croatia is party to the following agreements concerned with the protection of human rights and the rights of the persons belonging to national minorities: the International Treaty for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Treaty for Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Liberties and Protocols I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX to the said Convention, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the framework Convention to which this Report is submitted.

The Republic of Croatia accepts, without reserve, all responsibilities pertaining to human rights and the rights of members of national minorities, enshrined, inter alia, in the following international agreements: the General Declaration for Human Rights of 1948, the Final Document of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe of 1975, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe of 1990 and other documents of the CSCE concerned with human rights, especially the Copenhagen Document of the CSCE on human dimension and the Moscow Document of the CSCE on human dimension, the Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudices of 1978, the Declaration for the Abolition of all Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religious and other Beliefs of 1981, the declaration for the rights of the Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities of 1992, the Instrument of the Central European Initiative for the Protection of the Minority Rights of 1994, and other agreements and documents.

All international agreements ratified by Croatia constitute an integral part of her internal legal order, and their legal effect is above domestic law, or they have binding effect as general standards of customary international law.