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International human rights instruments are the treaties and other international texts that serve as legal sources for international human rights law and the protection of human rights in general. There are many varying types, but most can be classified into two broad categories: declarations, adopted by bodies such as the United Nations General Assembly, which are by nature declaratory, so not legally-binding although they may be politically authoritative and very well-respected soft law;, and often express guiding principles; and conventions that are multi-party treaties that are designed to become legally binding, usually include prescriptive and very specific language, and usually are concluded by a long procedure that frequently requires ratification by each states' legislature. Lesser known are some "recommendations" which are similar to conventions in being multilaterally agreed, yet cannot be ratified, and serve to set common standards. There may also be administrative guidelines that are agreed multilaterally by states, as well as the statutes of tribunals or other institutions. A specific prescription or principle from any of these various international instruments can, over time, attain the status of customary international law whether it is specifically accepted by a state or not, just because it is well-recognized and followed over a sufficiently long time.
A nation-state is a political unit where the state, a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory, and the nation, and a community based on a common identity, are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant national or ethnic group.
Cultural genocide or culturicide is a concept which was proposed by lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 as a component of genocide. Though the precise definition of cultural genocide remains contested, the Armenian Genocide Museum defines it as "acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction".
The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is a lingua franca or customary language, where a significant proportion of the population are francophones, or where there is a notable affiliation with French culture.
Language policy is an interdisciplinary academic field. Some scholars such as Joshua Fishman and Ofelia García consider it as part of sociolinguistics. On the other hand, other scholars such as Bernard Spolsky, Robert B. Kaplan and Joseph Lo Bianco argue that language policy is a branch of applied linguistics.
The term "minority group" has different usages, depending on the context. According to its common usage, the term minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number of individuals, or less than half, is a "minority’. Usually a minority group is disempowered relative to the majority, and that characteristic lends itself to different applications of the term minority.
The European Union (EU) has 24 official languages, of which three – English, French and German – have the higher status of "procedural" languages of the European Commission. Irish previously had the lower status of "treaty language" before being upgraded to an official and working language in 2007. However, a temporary derogation was enforced until 1 January 2022. The three procedural languages are those used in the day-to-day workings of the institutions of the EU. The designation of Irish as a "treaty language" meant that only the treaties of the European Union were translated into Irish, whereas Legal Acts of the European Union adopted under the treaties did not have to be. Luxembourgish and Turkish, which have official status in Luxembourg and Cyprus, respectively, are the only two official languages of EU member states that are not official languages of the EU. In 2023, the Spanish government requested that its regional languages Catalan, Basque, and Galician be added to the official languages of the EU.
A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally and an estimated number of roughly 5,000 to 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, the vast majority of languages are minority languages in every country in which they are spoken. Some minority languages are simultaneously also official languages, such as Irish in Ireland or the numerous indigenous languages of Bolivia. Likewise, some national languages are often considered minority languages, insofar as they are the national language of a stateless nation.
The Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights is a document signed by the International PEN Club, and several non-governmental organizations in 1996 to support linguistic rights, especially those of endangered languages. The document was adopted at the conclusion of the World Conference on Linguistic Rights held 6–9 June 1996 in Barcelona, Spain. It was also presented to the UNESCO Director General in 1996 but the Declaration has not gained formal approval from UNESCO.
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The European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages (EBLUL) was a non-governmental organisation that was set up to promote linguistic diversity and languages. It was founded in 1982 and discontinued in 2010. The organisation had close ties with both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, and was funded by both the European Commission and local and regional governmental organisations.
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In Occitan, vergonha refers to the effects of various language discriminatory policies of the government of France on its minorities whose native language was deemed a patois, where a Romance language spoken in the country other than Standard French, such as Occitan or the langues d'oïl, as well as other non-Romance languages such as Alsatian and Basque, were suppressed. Vergonha is imagined as a process of "being made to reject and feel ashamed of one's mother tongue through official exclusion, humiliation at school and rejection from the media", as organized and sanctioned by French political leaders from Henri Grégoire onward.
The Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) established in 1949 in conjunction with the formation of the Council of Europe. FUEN is an umbrella organization, as of 2023, it has more than 100 member organizations representing ethnic, linguistic and national minorities within Europe. FUEN has been instrumental in encouraging the Council of Europe to adopt the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. FUEN was organized to give expression to European cultures and languages that do not possess form as a nation-state. One in seven Europeans are members of such minorities and fifty-three languages are spoken in Europe by such minorities.
Linguistic discrimination is unfair treatment of people which is based on their use of language and the characteristics of their speech, including their first language, their accent, the perceived size of their vocabulary, their modality, and their syntax. For example, an Occitan speaker in France will probably be treated differently from a French speaker. Based on a difference in use of language, a person may automatically form judgments about another person's wealth, education, social status, character or other traits, which may lead to discrimination.
Human rights in Estonia are acknowledgedas being generally respected by the government. Nevertheless, there are concerns in some areas, such as detention conditions, excessive police use of force, and child abuse. Estonia has been classified as a flawed democracy, with moderate privacy and human development in Europe. Individuals are guaranteed on paper the basic rights under the constitution, legislative acts, and treaties relating to human rights ratified by the Estonian government. Estonia was ranked 4th in the world by press freedoms.
The demographics of the European Union show a highly populated, culturally diverse union of 27 member states. As of 1 January 2023, the population of the EU is slightly over 448 million people.
Occitan nationalism is a social and political movement in Occitania. Nationalists seek self-determination, greater autonomy or the creation of a sovereign state of Occitania. The basis of nationalism is linguistic and cultural although currently the Occitan varieties are minority languages within the language area.
References
- ↑ Argouarch, Philippe. "Paul Molac : Il nous faut agir pour changer la Constitution avant l'élection présidentielle". Agence Bretagne Presse (in French). Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ↑ Morgan, Sam (9 June 2016). "Language discrimination rife across EU". www.euractiv.com. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ↑ "Row brews over French regional languages as country's upcoming EU council presidency ponders future of linguistic diversity". The Parliament Magazine. 30 July 2021. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ↑ "Spain's "linguistic discrimination" debated in the European Committee on Civil Liberties for the first time". Catalan News Agency. 17 March 2016. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
- ↑ "International Manifesto in Support of Catalonia's Right to Freedom as a People - The Bullet". Socialist Project. 31 May 2021. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ↑ Ó Caollaí, Éanna (22 June 2016). "Brexit a 'potential disaster' for minority languages". The Irish Times. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ↑ Sonnad, Nikhil. "Brexit may threaten the many minority languages of Britain". Quartz. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ↑ "Brexit "disastrous" for Gaelic and Scots languages, warns European-wide campaigners". HeraldScotland. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ↑ "Brexit Could Devastate Celtic Languages". Language Magazine. 6 December 2019. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ↑ "Le Protocole de Donostia est déjà une réalité : les mesures permettant de concrétiser les droits linguistiques seront prêtes pour le 17 décembre". Protocol to Ensure Language Rights (in French). Archived from the original on 22 March 2017. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
- ↑ "Who | The Digital Language Diversity Project". Digital Language Diversity Project. Retrieved 8 November 2021.