MINELRES: New publication: European Minorities Face Educational Barriers

[MINELRES moderator]

Original sender: Duncan Wilson <dw@right-to-education.org>


European Minorities Face Educational Barriers

**** New Publication ****

The European Union pressurizes pre-accession countries to comply with
minority rights standards that its current members do not recognise.
Despite a growing consensus on the rights of minorities in Europe, the
precise nature of EU policy on minority rights in education is unclear,
as this overview of the subject shows. The report provides a conceptual
framework for minority rights in and through education and includes an
analytical review of legal and practical developments in four countries
involved in negotiations with the European Union. The result highlights
huge divergence in practice in minority education, and a lack of clarity
in just what the EU promotes.

Recommendations emerging from the research include that the European
Union should:
* as a matter of priority, address the gross violation of the
educational rights of the Roma;
* address arbitrariness in national recognition of minorities, their
existence should be a question of fact;
* focus on the exclusion of non-citizens and the issue of statelessness;
* promote multilingual education as an instrument of social inclusion,
not assimilation;
* oppose segregated schooling;
* confront inequality in educational opportunities;
* encourage the development of curricula which represent all
communities;
* finance rights-based reforms of education;
* support rights-based data collection efforts to help more accurately
determine the scope of educational disadvantage.

The report "Minority Rights in Education, Lessons for the European Union
from Estonia, Latvia, Romania and the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia" was written by Duncan Wilson, and is available for download
as PDF on the Right to Education Project website
www.right-to-education.org. A limited number of complimentary hard
copies are also available.

----------------------------------------------
Duncan Wilson
Research Coordinator
Right to Education Project
for the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education

email: dw@right-to-education.org

Tel: +46 46 222 1207
Fax: +46 46 222 1222
info: www.right-to-education.org