National Minorities

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

It is good to see High Commissioner Ekeus back at the Permanent Council meeting. We appreciate the detailed report on your recent travels to Central Asia and Hungary.

We welcome the High Commissioner's efforts to expand your engagement in Central Asia and take positive note of the seminar his office conducted in September in Kyrgyzstan on "Legislation and National Minorities: International Norms and Practice." Not only respect for the human rights of national minorities, but also the full participation of minorities in all parts of public life, will further strengthen the democratization process.

We look forward to his visit to Turkmenistan in November, and hope that this visit marks an increased level of engagement with the OSCE.

As High Commissioner Ekeus stated at this year's Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, it is indeed vitally important to overcome a minority's sense of isolation in order to reduce feelings of exclusion and distrust that will ultimately have divisive effects.

In this regard, the inclusion of minorities in elections, not only ensuring their voting rights, but also their participation as candidates, has been extremely important over the last few months with the elections in Slovakia, Latvia, Macedonia, Bosnia, the FRY and Kosovo.

We positively note the inclusion of a Hungarian and two Roma parties in the election campaign in the September Slovak Parliamentary elections. We welcome the inclusion of the Hungarian party in the new government, including such important posts as those dealing with the European integration process.

We encourage the Hungarian and Slovakian governments to step up efforts to resolve issues regarding the law on Hungarians living in neighboring countries.

While the Roma parties did not have the same success in the elections as the Hungarian party did, we encourage the new government to continue to take steps forward on more fully respecting Roma rights and their inclusion into public life.

We also encourage the new Latvian government, once it is formed, to take into consideration Russian minority concerns and issues. We encourage the High Commissioner to make the appropriate contacts with the new government as soon as possible to make additional progress on protecting the rights of the Russian minority there.

We also welcome the High Commissioner's continued attention to strengthening the bonds between the Armenian population in the Javakheti region and Georgian society at large.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, our Governments have committed to ensuring that all persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the protection of their rights. We are encouraged that many of our countries have taken active steps to ensure that their national laws are in compliance with this commitment. We encourage Croatia to continue working with the High Commissioner to adopt a draft law on national minorities, as rapidly as possible.

Likewise, we hope that the Serbian and Montenegrin authorities, in developing a new constitutional framework, will ensure that the rights of national minorities are guaranteed.

The active support for the equal rights of all individuals, including fully implementing anti-discrimination legislation and mechanisms, can help decrease support for aggressive nationalism, racism, chauvinism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

Our organization is currently attempting to further its work in this regard, with a view to an OSCE decision on this very issue. We would very much value your input, High Commissioner, on what more the OSCE, its institutions, field presences, and its participating States can do to combat discrimination and encourage tolerance.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.