CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Sadovic, Kenan |
|---|---|
| Title | Minority Languages Protection: between Reluctance and Enforceability in Croatia, Austria and France |
| Summary | Minority rights cover a large spectrum of rights that are specifically dedicated to protecting and enhance minorities. Throughout the last century with the general development of human rights, minority rights have found their place in the mechanisms of the League of Nations as they were defined and protected. The formation of international human rights with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights omitted minority rights. This can be explained with the general development of human rights being universal and not special. Linguistic rights are a subset of minority rights and they are present throughout human rights documents and instruments but only in a small manner. They are not directly given to only minorities in the European Convention on Human Rights for example but are given a mention or interpreted in the right to fair trial or the right to education. An effort will be made to examine the right to be educated in one’s mother tongue which technically does not exist under the European Convention but is nonetheless present in some shape or form. This very narrow reading and perspective of linguistic rights and minority rights is seen through the lens of educational rights because linguistic rights as such do not exist under that name. The system put in place during the years is designed to favor a progressive realization through the United Nations and Council of Europe documents. Together with national legislation and Constitutional protection linguistic rights of minorities should technically be protected. Historical perspectives are analyzed because of their importance in providing context to the comparators’ behavior and stance towards the minorities. Minorities in these three countries have been living for centuries and have been a part of the culture, history and development even though their mother tongue is different. As minorities they have faced discrimination and were victims of damaging policies, especially in the area of language and linguistic rights. Even though the three comparators have moved away from subjugating minorities and trying to assimilate them, their current efforts to secure minority rights that are guaranteed by the States themselves is not enough. The exact actions of the comparators are to grant minorities linguistic rights in education, but they are not completely followed through and the minorities are facing obstacles. These actions and barriers consist of territorial application of minority rights, only providing for non-compulsory language education or outright denial of school registration. Without a strong system of supervision and without support from the European Court of Human Rights, the reluctance of the comparators to follow through their obligations creates a weak system of protection for these minorities. |
| Supervisor | Mathias Möschel |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/sadovi_kenan.pdf |
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