The strengthening of state languages in Ukraine and the Baltic states must be achieved in balance with measures to protect minority tongues, newly appointed OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) Kairat Abdrakhmanov told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th December, 2020) The strengthening of state languages in Ukraine and the Baltic states must be achieved in balance with measures to protect minority tongues, newly appointed OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) Kairat Abdrakhmanov told Sputnik.
Ukraine and Latvia, which have large Russian-speaking minorities, have recently passed laws to promote their official languages and to transition all Primary education from other languages.
The former Kazakh foreign minister told Sputnik that nations have the legal right to enshrine their languages but that such policies must be "balanced with measures to promote and protect minority languages, including in education."
Abdrakhmanov added that he intended to make a priority of his tenure the implementation of the recommendations in this area as set forth by the Venice Commission for Democracy through Law.
"The opinion of the Venice Commission, which also reflects the HCNM's policy recommendations in this area, contains concrete proposals on how to achieve such a balance. In assuming my functions as High Commissioner for National Minorities, I intend to focus on these issues as a matter of priority," the diplomat told Sputnik.
After achieving independence, Baltic states did not grant their ethnic Russian residents citizenship, instead giving them alien or non-citizen passports. In Latvia, where Russian is the mother tongue of 40 percent of the population, it has no legal status and is considered a foreign language. Ukraine has by and large purged the Russian language from its airwaves and is actively pushing Russian-language schools to adopt Ukrainian-based education.
