International Law and Education in a Minority Language

Abstract

The Statute of the International Court of Justice sets out three principal (and two subsidiary) sources of international law. They are treaties, customary international law as evidenced by the practice of countries accepted as law, general principles of law recognised by all countries, and as subsidiary sources, judicial decisions and the writing of “highly qualified publicists”. The literature on the international law of minority language education is thus not a primary source of the law, but it serves as both a subsidiary source and as a record of discussion of the primary sources. This chapter discusses the international law concerning the right to an education in a language that is not the majority language of the state providing the education. The definition of “minority language” used in this chapter is the language spoken by

a group numerically inferior to the rest of the population of a State, in a non-dominant position, whose members — being nationals of the State — possess ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics differing from those of the rest of the population and show, if only implicitly, a sense of solidarity, directed towards preserving their culture, traditions, religion, or language (Capotorti 1979).