European Academy project: MIRIS - Minority Rights Information System

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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 07:58:22 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: European Academy project: MIRIS - Minority Rights Information System

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Günther Rautz <Gü[email protected]>

European Academy project: MIRIS - Minority Rights Information
System



EUROPAISHE AKADEMIE BOZEN
ACCADEMIA EUROPEA BOLZANO
ACADEMIA EUROPEICA BULSAN

via Veggensteinstr. 12Q - 39100 
Bolzano - Italy
tel. +39-0471-30 61 90
fax  +39-0471-30 61 99

MIRIS - Minority Rights Information System

Motivation

The documentation and easy availability of data on ethnic minorities
is increasingly significant. Over the last couple of years, the legal
standardisation in Europe, the enlargement of the European Union, and
the setting of international instruments such as the Framework
Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Charter
for Regional or Minority Languages of the Council of Europe are
leading to a new sensibility towards minority questions. Legal
standards of minority protection still differ from state to state. In
spite of numerous existing information systems, the gathering of
exhaustive information as well as the comparison of different
countries are still difficult tasks.

Description

At the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano a new information system on
minority rights with focus on the legal aspects of minority protection
is currently being developed. This information system will fill the
open mentioned gap and become a major consultation centre for minority
questions in Eastern and Western Europe.

The Information System on Minority Rights in Europe will include the
most important legal texts on minorities, international treaties
(Council of Europe, OSCE, UN, etc.) as well as national legislation
and case-law. The Framework Convention and its State Reports (Council
of Europe) will provide the basis of this information system, which
will be completed by reports of minority groups and expert opinions
(e.g. of the advisory committee). In addition to that, specific
documents about minority groups (statistics, history, etc.) will be
available.

The information system can be accessed via any Web-browser and
includes at least the following user interaction modes: 
- browsing the information system, 
- advanced search and 
- automatic report generation. 

In the browsing mode, the user can navigate starting from the
Framework Convention via pre-determined links through the entire
hyper-space. The advanced search mode allows a more focused search.
The user formulates complex queries which result in a list of relevant
documents possibly combined with factual knowledge. A typical query
might be "What countries regulated a particular area by national
laws?" resulting in a list of countries plus links to the relevant
laws. The generation of reports collects information and data from
several documents and composes a single report. A report might be
about a specific topic, e.g. Ladins in South-Tyrol, which can be
generated automatically, or it might be individually composed by the
user.

Aim of the project

Already existing databases on minority questions focus either only on
one specific topic (e.g. language rights) or a limited number of
countries.

This is the very first time a database will include all European
countries and a whole range of different topics by simultaneously
focusing on the legal status of minorities. Such an information system
will be both a point of reference and a starting point for further
projects.

Target group
Experts (e.g. advisory committee of the Council of Europe),
representatives of minority organisations, students, and scholars

Partners
University of Hannover, Germany

Duration
Period of development: 3 years

Contact Person
Günther Rautz: Gü[email protected] / 
Eva Maria Haberland: [email protected]

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