Rahvusvähemuste õigused rahvusvahelistele standarditele tuginedes: Eesti Vabariik ja Slovakkia Vabariik

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to show how different conditions in the Slovak Republic and the Republic of Estonian influence their minority policies towards their largest national minority, which is Hungarians in Slovakia and Russians in Estonia. It does so through the protection of national minority rights, which are based on international standards in four categories: language, education, politics and culture. Today, there are a lot of ethnic groups in nation-states, which has given an incentive to international law in regulating the protection of minorities. The European Convention for the Protection of National Minorities that regulates the rights of national minorities, is a guiding force for the states in protecting their national minorities. Namely a guiding force, because minority policies differ from state to state and how the provisions of the convention are being accomplished is decided by the states. In enforcing these provisions and forming minority policy a state is being influenced by different conditions like polity, the size of national minority and their historical background, the question of citizenship and geopolitical position. Hence minority policies differ between the states and securing the rights of national minorities is not unambiguously possible. According to the framework convention the Slovak Republic has put its provisions into practice to a greater extent than the Republic of Estonia, which derives from the fact that hungarian national minority in Slovakia has a more historical background, as they have been belonging to the area for centuries, which is why there is no citizenship problem like in Estonia, where more than half of the persons belonging to russian minority do not have estonian citizenship. The citizenship problem in Estonia also influences other areas of cultural rights, like language and education rights, by putting more emphasis on integration policy. According to the international standards, Slovakia has provided most of the cultural rights in political-, linguistic-, educational- and cultural field, while Estonia has some disadvantages in the first three areas.