The Institute for Democracy SOCIETAS CIVILIS – Skopje (IDSCS) invites you to the promotion of the public policy study “Local Language Policies for Non-Majority Communities: Possibilities for more effective implementation”. The promotion will be held on 30 April 2014 (Wednesday), starting in 13:00 o’clock, in the EU Info Center – Skopje. The public policy study written on the basis of a research, conducted by IDSCS in the period November 2013 – April 2014, will be presented on the promotion. The study offers a thorough insight into the situation connected to exercising the right of official use of non-majority community members’ native languages at a local level. Besides showing the general picture in 31 local self-government units, where there is more than one native language in official use, the study also show an in-depth analysis of six case studies: The city of Skopje and the municipalities of Kumanovo, Gostivar, Chair, Studenichani and Dolneni. On the basis of the research findings, the study also offers recommendations for the stakeholders, directed towards more effective implementation of the local language policies.
The official use of the non-majority communities’ native languages at a local level, represents a constitutional right granted to the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia, pursuant to Article 7 of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia. More than one third of the local self-government units are obliged to enable official use of at least one of the non-majority communities’ native languages, while some of them have already implemented it self-initiatively for even more languages. Nevertheless, there are considerable indications that the local language policies are often a victim of implementation deficit, due to lack of financial and human resources. At the same time, the enforcement of the Macedonian language policies is not supported enough by the civil organizations and the academic community. By publishing the study “Local Language Policies for Non-Majority Communities: Possibilities for more effective implementation”, IDSCS aims at supporting the implementation of Article 7 from the part of the Constitution connected to official use of the non-majority communities’ native languages at a local level, but also fill in the research and advocacy gap in this segment of public policy.
The promotion is part of the project “Local Language Policies for Non-Majority Communities: Possibilities for more effective implementation”, enforced by IDSCS and supported by the Slovakian and Balkan Public Policy Fund.
The Agenda for the event can be downloaded on the following link.