Dear participants,
To get prepared for the training course we prepared some tasks for you which you can find HERE.
The deadline for the first task is October 1, 2011.
To get prepared for the training course we prepared some tasks for you which you can find HERE.
The deadline for the first task is October 1, 2011.
Task 1:
ReplyDelete1. Russian Federation is a very multicultural country. There are almost 200 different ethnicities living in its territory. And certainly most of them are minorities. From Ossetians and Armenians to Udmurts and Koreans, from Azerbaijani and Kyrgyz to Chukchi and Eskimo. Of course they are all different. And they all live in different conditions and different traditions.
2. Of course, possibilities for social and cultural participation and expression are not equal. Mainly it is so because some of the ethnicities even can’t read Russian language. Besides it a lot of the minorities can’t speak Russian language, so they are not able to participate in the social life of the country. But although Russian is the only governmental language in the Russian Federation, some of the subjects of the Russian Federation have their own governmental languages. In total there are 23 governmental languages in the Russian Federation. But in practice, there are much more of them.
And if we’ll talk about people with disabilities in Russia (which can be considered as a minority group as well), I have to conclude that the situation in this sector is very sad. Most of the physically disabled people are not even able to leave there homes because there are no special elevators for disabled. Although buses are equipped with such elevators, no one can use it (because invalids just cannot reach bus stations).
3. It is primarily depends on the minority and its type. But mostly people in the Russian Federation don’t show a lot of friendliness to the national minorities who settle in their land. But they can be treated very differently if they are originally from this region of Russia. It mostly depends on ethnic cultural peculiarities. People with disabilities, elder people, veterans are usually treated with respect both officially and unofficially (f.e. most of the times people can let them go without waiting in a line or give them some kind of help if they need it).
4. We have a lot of minorities issues concerning immigration. For instance, there are many cases of illegal migration from Tajikistan and China. There are also many issues concerning social rights of minorities with disabilities.
5. Contemporary democratic state has a principle that everyone has equal rights independently on his nation, language, religion etc. But in the fact even when people have equal rights they often face difficulties, f.e. if they are not able to speak the official language of the state. There is a national and international law that declares such situations. European convention of human rights protection from 1950 declares that no one can be discriminated as a minority. This is the Convention of the Council of Europe. Certainly there are a lot of other international (Paris Charter 1990, European Charter of regional languages and minority languages) and national (Constitution of Russian Federation) laws. In practice, national diasporas are very important institutions for protection of national minorities.
6. Most of the times minorities have to apply to intergovernmental organizations (OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights etc.) or to NGOs (Minority Rights Group International, EuroMinority etc.)
7. Such cases occur very often. For example, German organization “AWO” together with Russian fond “New Eurasia” organized an event called “Bridges of good-neighborhood”. Event was held on September 12-14, 2011 in the sanatorium “Voskresenskoe” near Moscow with the participation of NGOs of Armenia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Moldavia, Poland, Romania, Ukraine and Russia. Event was mainly aimed to prevent illegal migration to Russia by creating better conditions and possibilities for legal migration. Another potential solution for this problem that can occur in the next few months is a creation of the Ministry of Migration.
There are also a lot of web-sites that are created by civil society to protect rights of minorities.