Language policy, language rights, Ukraine

What is it about?

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the regime changes in the Central European states, Hungarian communities living in the neighbouring countries of Hungary hopefully anticipated that after a social, political and economic transformation a new era would start in minority and linguistic rights. At the beginning of the 1990s, there was a chance that the restriction of language rights would cease. Hungary and its neighbours now are all members of the European Council and the European Union (with the exception of Ukraine and Serbia). However, the restriction of minority and linguistic rights sometimes causes tensions still despite European conventions, which were developed and recommended for the prevention of ethnic and linguistic conflicts, the codification of minority and linguistic rights and their adoption in the first half of the 1990s, gave hope for overcoming such conflicts. In 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, in 1995 the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities was born under the support of the Council of Europe. All states in the Central European region, including Hungary, have joined these two international minority protection conventions. However, the legal issues arising from the limitation of the use of the Hungarian language throughout the 20th century are still sources of conflict, in spite of the Hungarian language belonging to the languages protected by the Charter in all the states neighbouring Hungary, and that Hungary has classified the official language of all its neighbouring states as languages protected by the Charter. In this study, we examine why language policy and linguistic problems could persist in this region in the early 21st century, despite the general acceptance of the two international minority protection documents mentioned above. The analysis shows that international law is lagging behind the linguistic practice of many states. It is pointed out that no international document contains the right to the recognition of autonomy of national minorities or the recognition of the official status of minority languages. Instead, international law lists only vague minimum standards, and only in the form of recommendations.

Featured Image