Language Research

Georgia is a State Party to the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It recognizes its obligation to protect the rights of minorities contained in Article 27 of the Covenant.

Georgia is also a State Party to the UN International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities was signed on January 21, 2000.

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Updated (November 2005)

GEORGIA FINALLY RATIFIES THE FRAMEWORK CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF NATIONAL MINORITIES

On October 13, 2005 the Georgian Parliament finally ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the first legally binding multilateral instrument addressing the issue of minority rights, including the rights of linguistic minorities¹. As of October 10, 2005, thirty-seven out of the forty-six member states had ratified or acceded to the Convention.

As regards linguistic rights, the parties ratifying the Convention undertake to recognize that every person belonging to a national minority has the right to use freely and without interference his or her minority language, in private and in public, orally and in writing. The Convention also establishes that persons belonging to those minorities have adequate opportunities for being taught the minority language or for receiving instruction in this language but without prejudice to the learning of the official language or the teaching in this language.

In spite of Mr. Gaon's² comments that Georgia should ratify the Convention without reservations it refrained from undertaking a commitment to ensure the conditions that would make it possible to employ minority languages in relations between representatives of the national minority groups and administrative authorities in areas predominantly populated by minorities.

The Georgian side also proclaimed that it would not be responsible for implementing the provisions of the Convention in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, territories with which Georgia is in conflict.

So far Georgia has not signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Source: Mercator News, October 2005, http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/index-gb.htm

1. This document was adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on November 10, 1994; it was opened for signature on February 1, 1995 and entered into force on February 1, 1998.

2. the Council of Europe's Ambassador to Georgia

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