Tautinių mažumų apsaugos pagrindų konvencijos Patariamojo komiteto vaidmuo ir konvencijos įgyvendinimo Lietuvoje aktualijos

ENFramework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities is the first international treaty for the protection of national minorities, which specifies legal principles. Not all provisions of the Convention might be directly applicable; the Convention leaves the measure of discretion for States. The Convention does not provide any definition of 'minority rights holder'. As it was stated in the Explanatory Report: 'it was decided to adopt a pragmatic approach, based on the recognition that at this stage, it is impossible to arrive at a definition capable of mustering general support of all Council of Europe member States'. As a result of this programmatic character of the Convention, member States' approaches are very different. Some countries (e.g. Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan) practise mandatory recording of ethnic background in birth certificates and identification documents, other countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Slovenia, Poland) recognise not all minorities or just have the list of official minorities, which does not include all minorities.The scope of application and criteria of national minorities differ from country to country. In this article the author analyses three issues: minority rights in education; right to use minority languages: personal names and topographical indications; inter-state relations and national minorities. The Convention formulates State obligations not as imperatives, but more usually as undertakings and endeavours. Because of this, the analysis of the practice of the Advisory Committee is very important. As the Venice Commission has stated, 'flexible, diplomatic solutions applied by non-judicial body may prove more effective in this tricky field'.