On May 31, 2018, the international conference “Language Policy and Conflict Prevention”, marking the twentieth anniversary of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities’ (HCNM) Oslo Recommendations regarding the linguistic rights of national minorities, took place at the University of Oslo, Norway.
The event was attended by practitioners, academics and representatives of the OSCE participating States, who discussed and shared national best practices and lessons learned in the implementation of language-related policies. Also, during the sessions, the representatives of the education authorities presented their national experience in ensuring the right of the ethnic minorities to education in their language.
At the event, the National Institute of Justice was represented by Alexandra Nica, the head of the Training and research division.
The conference also served as a frame for the launch of the volume entitled “Language Policy and Conflict Prevention”, which offers models of good-practices and recommendations for the states on the issue of developing language policies that would contribute to inter-ethnic peace building.
The Oslo Recommendations are widely used for the prevention of conflicts, for the protection and promoting linguistic rights within multiethnic societies in order to reduce the inter-ethnic tensions and to fortify the minorities’ social integration and cohesion.
