High Commissioner on National Minorities

Access to the media in one's own language is particularly important for persons belonging to national minorities. Being able to read magazines and newspapers, listen to the radio and watch TV programmes in minority languages is vital for maintaining and developing their cultural and linguistic identity. Furthermore, it determines whether minorities have access to social, economic and political opportunities.

In practice, minorities encounter a number of obstacles in accessing TV and radio programmes in their own language. This can result from economic circumstances limiting the commercial viability of producing and broadcasting programmes in small minority languages. In some cases, however, it may result from deliberate exclusion, and be part of a political strategy to "protect" one language at the expense of others, for example by means of quotas, restrictions on ownership, refusal of broadcast licences, or discriminatory regulation or taxation.

The Media Guidelines

In preventive diplomacy, the High Commissioner relies on international legal standards to promote the integration of minorities in a way which respects their identity. This includes areas such as education, political participation and the use of minority languages, but also the promotion of minorities' access to the media.

In 2003, therefore, the High Commissioner invited a group of international experts to draw up a set of recommendations on the use of minority languages in broadcasting. The resulting document - the Guidelines on the use of Minority Languages in the Broadcast Media - clarifies applicable international law and provides a basis for developing law, institutions and policies that fit the specific cultural and linguistic context of each state.

The document has four parts:

I. General principles (including freedom of expression and protection of identity)
II. State policy on broadcasting in minority languages
III. Regulation (including the limits to regulation and translation restrictions)
IV. Measures and funding to promote broadcasting in minority languages

Minority language re-broadcasting in Georgia

In addition to using the Media Guidelines in preventive diplomacy, the High Commissioner regularly sets up projects aiming to promote media access for minorities, always emphasizing early action and conflict prevention.

One such project, "News Re-broadcasting in the Minority Language, Georgia", has been running in the Samtskhe-Javekheti region since 2003. It has helped local partners in southern Georgia, which is largely populated by ethnic Armenians, to expand the capacity of local TV and radio stations run by ethnic Armenian journalists.

In addition to local coverage, they translate and re-broadcast the Georgian national news, providing Javekheti's Armenian population with information on the political, economic, social and cultural developments Georgia-wide. This increases their sense of belonging to the country and encourages their participation in public life.

The re-broadcasting also provides an alternative source of information in addition to the media of the kin State, Armenia. Local TV stations in the Samtskhe-Javekheti region are now translating from Georgian into Armenian and re-broadcasting the daily news transmitted by two national TV channels. The project's success in Samtskhe-Javekheti led to a similar project begun in 2006 in Georgia's Azeri populated region of Kvemo-Kartli.

Minority media coverage of elections in Kyrgyzstan

Another broadcast media initiative, was the "Minority Media Coverage of Presidential Election" project in Kyrgyzstan, implemented in 2005. About 15 per cent of the population in Kyrgyzstan is ethnic Uzbek. In the past, a lack of minority language information about the policies and candidates of the various political parties limited political participation of the Uzbek minority, particularly during elections.

The High Commissioner and its local partners therefore developed a project to increase the political awareness of the Uzbek in Kyrgyzstan and their participation in the 2005 presidential election. Through this project, the broadcast and translation into Uzbek of the televised presidential election debates was arranged in the south of Kyrgyzstan, as well as the translation of campaign materials.