Challenges That Turned Out to be Legal Ones Kaisa Syrjänen Schaal LLM Church of Sweden Why is the Church of Sweden involved in minority and indigenous issues more ID: 427842
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Slide1
Linguistic Challenges That Turned Out to be Legal Ones
Kaisa Syrjänen Schaal, LL.M.Church of SwedenSlide2
Why is the Church of Sweden involved in minority and indigenous
issues?
more
focus on indigenous and minority issues because these groups are also part of the churchreconciliation processes with the Sami and Romaneed to react on human rights violationscommitment to work with rights based approach and empowerment in general Examples: criticized the Swedish Government for being too passive in implementing indigenous rights (2013); two shadow reports to Council of Europe on minority rights (2012, 2013); recent report on minority/indigenous youth issuesSlide3
Swedish experiencethe rights of national
minorities were recognized
very
late (1999) –
limited actionindigenous rights have not been developed in spite of domestic and international criticismgeneral lack of awareness and knowledge of national minorities’ and indigenous rights and historical wrongdoings by the stateself righteous attitudes towards domestic human rights issuesSlide4
Many linguistic challenges
ongoing
language
shift is threatening the survival of national minority languages in Swedensome languages are severly threatened similar patterns: fewer children learn their minority language, functional illiteracy, limited language domains, limited public use and lack of media in minority languagestoo few are reaching higher proficiency and literacy in minority languages Slide5
decisive
and innovative measures are needed according
to
NGOs
, linguists, Council of Europe and UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous IssuesThe Swedish educational system’s ability to support and promote minority children’s proficiency and literacy in their minority language is the single most important issue to address for the minority languages to survive. Yet, very little has been done….Slide6
Marginalized and IgnoredNational Minority Children’s Struggle for Language Rights in Sweden 2013 (Dec. 2013)
Slide7
Legal problems in educational system
Legislation in the field of
education
is
too weak, it does not provide the right to stronger immersion och bilingual programs.Municipalities will not do anything without legal obligations. It is virtually impossible to increase the volumes of pupils or the amount of teaching provided in minority languages.Slide8
Bilingual or minority language medium
pre-school education is difficult
to get,
even
in areas where the municipalities have to provide it”partly in minority language” v. ”substancial part” (minimalistic interpretations limit possibilities) Mother tongue tuition (30-40 min/week) is not enough in order to acquire higher proficiency and literacyIt is difficult to even receive mother tongue tuition of any length: 300 out of 595 Sami pupils received such tuition (2011)”Basic knowledge
” in
minority
language
is still
required
for
tuitionSlide9
Bilingual programs are very few: 188
pupils in Sami Schools + 167 pupils in
integrated
Sami program (2012); 7 bilingual Sweden-
Finnish schools with 698 pupils (2013).Stronger immersion programs are not allowed (minimum of 50 % teaching in Swedish).Exceedingly difficult to establish new private minority schools. Have to show ”sufficient” number of potential pupils in advance.Slide10
Structural problems in educational system
Teacher
training
is
being reformed: seriously underfunded, will not provide enough teachers (minimum funding needed 26.3 million SEK; the Swedish Government allocated 6.5 million SEK)no extra incentives for students (yet, such incentives are being used today for other types of teacher training)Lack of sanctions and remediesSlide11
Conclusions
National minority and indigenous children
are not
receiving
the support they need. They and their needs are being ignored and marginalized within the educational system.Sweden is not fulfilling its obligations under Council of Europe Minority Conventions nor under Article 30 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (the right to language and cultural identity).