Specialist says Latvia must ratify European minority rights convention.

(From BBC Monitoring International Reports)

A historian who is a recognized expert on ethnic issues in Latvia has called on the government to ratify the Council of Europe's Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities, arguing that many members of the country's minority ethnic groups still feel insecure in Latvia. The author also wrote that it was not necessarily true that the government must first define what a national minority is - it could instead define the range of people to whom the convention's terms would apply. The following is the text of a report published on the Latvian Internet portal politika.lv on 12 November. Subheadings have been inserted editorially.

Debates over ratification of the Council of Europe's Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities in Latvia suggest that we are finally beginning to understand the importance of this issue. I fully agree with something that the director of the Public Integration Department, Reinis Aboltins, recently told the politika.lv portal - that the convention should not be ratified just so that the country might prove that it is ready to follow along with the Council of Europe's views on the law. The main motivation instead should be the idea that the state should respect the desire of more than 40 per cent of the country's residents to preserve and to develop their minority identity - language, culture and traditions. We are inviting these people to become integrated into Latvia's society and to join us when it comes to the values that we hold in common. At the same time, however, integration principles demand that a government protect the specific values of each ethnic group, recognizing that these are lasting values which enrich Latvia. Ratification of the framework convention would confirm these guarantees. This would strengthen domestic stability in Latvia, and that is the most important aspect of ratification as far as I am concerned.

A survey was recently conducted among directors and activists from various ethnic minority organizations and artistic and scientific collectives to learn their views about links between public integration and ratification of the convention, and this survey serves as a testament to the importance of the issue. Of 103 respondents, 81 said that ratification is a key prerequisite for integration. Only six respondents said that ratification is not important. Sadly, 16 respondents did not know about the contents of the convention, and so they could not answer the question.

Defining minorities

Aboltins was right in emphasizing the importance of defining what a minority is in Latvia. It would indeed be good if our parliament were to tell us which people in Latvia would receive the guarantees that are declared in the convention. I also agree that it will be difficult to adopt an official definition of minorities. Aboltins suggested that perhaps we can make do without such a definition. Perhaps, but then we will face many misunderstandings and complications in implementing the terms of the convention.

The vote could be taken quickly, of course, if Latvia were to adopt a recommendation which the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved on 1 February 1993. It recommends that governments define national minorities as groups of non-indigenous people who are citizens of the relevant country and who have traditionally lived in the territory of the country in large numbers. This year the Parliamentary Assembly reviewed problems with the implementation of the ...