COUNCIL OF EUROPE COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS CALLED CE COUNTRIES TO UPHOLD LINGUISTIC RIGHTS OF NATIONAL MINORITIES
PanARMENIAN.Net
02.02.2010 19:47 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights
Thomas Hammarberg made a statement on the rights of national minorities
and appealed to the Council of Europe member countries to respect the
rights of ethnic minorities. "We must respect the linguistic rights of
national minorities, otherwise the human rights are violated leading
to inter-communal clashes," Hammerberg’s statement says.
He drew attention to the fact that over the past 20 years this problem
has worsened again. The existing nationalist tendencies are used
by radicals for spreading xenophobia against minorities. "Language
problems in Europe are not a phenomenon, international and European
conventions have provisions and rules concerning these issues,"
the statement of the commissioner said, Yerkir Union reported.
The Council of Europe is the oldest international organisation working
towards European integration, having been founded in 1949. It has
a particular emphasis on legal standards, human rights, democratic
development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation. It has
47 member states with some 800 million citizens. Its statutory
institutions are the Committee of Ministers comprising the foreign
ministers of each member state, the Parliamentary Assembly composed
of MPs from the Parliament of each member state, and the Secretary
General heading the secretariat of the Council of Europe. The most
famous conventional bodies of the Council of Europe are the European
Court of Human Rights, which enforces the European Convention on Human
Rights, and the European Pharmacopoeia Commission, which sets the
quality standards for pharmaceutical products in Europe. The Council
of Europe’s work has resulted in standards, charters and conventions
to facilitate cooperation between European countries and further
integration. The seat of the Council of Europe is in Strasbourg,
France with English and French as its two official languages. The
Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly and the Congress
also use German, Italian and Russian for some of their work.