Plataforma per la Llengua has managed to persuade several United Nations (UN) Member States to call on Spain to make a commitment to improving respect for the rights of language minorities, including Catalan-speakers, and to prosecute language-related hate crimes. Specifically, four States have demanded this as part of this morning's (Wed) session of the UPR of the UN Human Rights Council: Austria, Ireland, the Marshall Islands and Samoa. Plataforma per la Llengua is particularly pleased because, at the last UPR four-and-a-half years ago, no State made any reference to this issue. In October, Plataforma per la Llengua presented a report compiling the violations of these rights in Spain, and, in recent months, it has been in contact with representatives of various States to ensure they accepted the organisation's recommendations for guaranteeing language rights.
As part of today's session, these States have made four recommendations to Spain: to promote language diversity, protect the human rights of language minorities, and prohibit language-related discrimination by law; to safeguard cultural rights by promoting education and practice in the languages of the different territories; to step up its efforts to combat hate crimes against national, ethnic, religious and language minorities (including internet hate crime); and to fight all forms of racism, heeding the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities.
Another 30 or so States have also called on Spain to make a commitment to stepping up the prosecution of discrimination and improving the protection of minorities. In the last UPR, four-and-a-half years ago, only four States asked Spain pursue discrimination against minorities, and none made explicit reference to language minorities.
Plataforma per la Llengua celebrates the fact that, finally, several States have heeded some of the organisation's recommendations and have dared to make them public within the framework of the UPR, the mechanism by which UN States assess each other's level of respect for human rights. To achieve this, the organisation prepared a report on the violations of language rights in Spain and, this February, sent it to the States that attended the preliminary session organised by UPR Info, also at the United Nations' headquarters in Geneva. In recent months it has also set out the violations of language rights in Spain in detail at bilateral meetings with delegations from various States.
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Meeting this lunchtime with the UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities
After the UPR session, this lunchtime Plataforma per la Llengua met the UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities, Nicolas Levrat, from Switzerland, in an attempt to persuade all international agents to force the Spanish State to protect Catalan and Catalan-speakers' rights. The meeting, also attended by representatives of the European network ELEN, Òmnium Cultural and A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística, allowed us to share the main violations of rights suffered by Catalan-speakers in Spain with Levrat and to reiterate the recommendations to international institutions made by the organisation.
Specifically, Plataforma per la Llengua recommends that Spain should take measures to pursue language discrimination by public servants and include the Catalan-speaking minority as a protected group under the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. It also recommends that Spain should approve legislation to recognise the rights of speakers of official languages other than Spanish so they can use them with State employees and in the judicial system, and that it should comply with the recommendations of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) and the UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities. In particular, it should amend article 231 of the Judiciary Act, which establishes that in judicial proceedings civil servants must use Spanish, and that "co-official minority languages" will only be allowed if no party objects. Plataforma per la Llengua also recommends that Spain should take measures to guarantee that children can be educated in Catalan, and that hate speech on the internet and in other media against Catalan-speakers and the Catalan language should be investigated, prosecuted and punished.
Previous event on Tuesday organised by ELEN
Plataforma per la Llengua also took part in a round table discussion among language organisations at the United Nations' headquarters on Tuesday 29 April, deploring the reversal of some of Spain's language policies. Marga Payola, the organisation's international coordinator, spoke alongside representatives of the Galician organisation A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística and the Basque Euskalgintzaren Kontseilua. All three organisations also helped draw up the report on violations of linguistic rights in Spain prepared by the European network ELEN, which organised the round table. Davyth Hicks, general secretary of ELEN, also spoke in the discussion on the report.
