Linguistic rights
Other parameters for analyzing linguistic rights include the degree of territoriality, amount of positivity, orientation in terms of assimilation or maintenance, and overtness.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee defines privacy as:[9] ... the sphere of a person's life in which he or she can freely express his or her identity, be it by entering into relationships with others or alone.
The public authorities must either use the language which the individual understands, or hire an interpreter to translate the proceedings, including court cases.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 26, does promise to protect all individuals from discrimination on the grounds of language.
[13] Some states have legal provisions for the safeguard of collective linguistic rights because there are clear-cut situations under particular historical and social circumstances.
An example of the application of personality is in federal Canadian legislation, which grants the right to services in French or English regardless of territory.
[12] Assimilation-oriented types of language rights refer to the aim of the law to assimilate all citizens within the country, and range from prohibition to toleration.
Many policies of linguistic assimilation being tied to the concept of nation building and facilitating communication between various groups inside of a singular state system.
[16] Many maintenance-oriented approaches require both a framework of collective and positive rights and significant government funding in order to produce the desired outcomes of linguistic maintenance.
In Wales and Quebec, for example, there is significant debate over funding and the use of collective rights in building an effective maintenance framework.
[6] Degree of overtness refers to the extent laws or covenants are explicit with respect to language rights, and covertness the reverse.
[24] There is also the protest against the framework of Linguistic Human Rights singling out minority languages for special treatment, causing limited resources to be distributed unfairly.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1992.
The Court is a regional, legal platform that monitors and promotes the AU states' compliance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
Zuckermann et al. (2014) proposed the enactment of "Native Tongue Title", an ex gratia compensation scheme for the loss of indigenous languages in Australia: "Although some Australian states have enacted ex gratia compensation schemes for the victims of the Stolen Generations policies, the victims of linguicide (language killing) are largely overlooked ...
[33] On October 11, 2017, the New South Wales (NSW) parliament passed a legislation that recognises and revives indigenous languages for the first time in Australia's history.
Section 23 declares three types of rights for Canadian citizens speaking French or English as their mother tongue and are minorities in a region.
This control can take the form of "exclusive decision-making authority over the expenditure of funds, the appointment and direction of the administration, instructional programs, the recruitment of teachers and personnel, and the making of agreements for education and services".
[37] All of these rights apply to primary and secondary education, sustained on public funds, and depend on the numbers and circumstances.
There is also overt obligation of the state to provide for the "cultural and societal needs of the Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking populations of the country on an equal basis".
Beginning in 1965, the Panchayat system eased out regional languages from the radio and educational institutions, and protestors were put in prison.
On 1 June 1999, the Supreme Court forbade Kathmandu Metropolitan City from giving official recognition to Nepal Bhasa, and Rajbiraj Municipality and Dhanusa District Development Committee from recognizing Maithili.
It says that Nepali in Devanagari script shall be the language of official business, however, the use of mother tongues in local bodies or offices shall not be considered a barrier.
[66] The use of national languages in local government bodies has not happened in practice, and discouragement in their use and discrimination in allocation of resources persist.
Some analysts have stated that one of the chief causes of the Maoist insurgency, or the Nepalese Civil War (1996–2006), was the denial of language rights and marginalization of ethnic groups.
Just before the departure of the British, a "swabhasha" (your own language) movement was launched in a bid to phase out English slowly, replacing it with Sinhala or Tamil.
There was then a fear among the Tamils that people belonging to the "untouchable castes" would be encouraged to convert to Buddhism and then "brainwashed" to learn Sinhala as well.
Veteran politicians noted that current youths were more ready to engage in violence, and some of them even had ties to certain rebel groups in South India.
The government decided that they wanted to standardize the university admission criteria, based on the language the entrance exams were taken in.
[69][70] However, it has sparked controversy, particularly among anglophones and businesses, over restrictions on English usage, leading to amendments and legal challenges since its introduction in 1977.
