Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights called CE countries to uphold linguistic rights of national minorities

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.