 |
COMIR Projects
- Coordination of information resources
- Presentation of standards and legislation, their analysis and implementation
- News reporting and dissemination of information
- Capacity building
- Promotion of state-NGO-IGO dialogue
2. Presentation of standards and legislation, their analysis and implementation
Project:
Database of Minority-Related National Legislation in Post-Communist States of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkan Region, http://www.riga.lv/minelres/NationalLegislation_natleg.htm
Lead organization:
MINELRES, Latvia
The bilingual database of legal texts both in the national
language and in English includes national laws and other legal texts (in full or
relevant excerpts) pertinent to the rights of national minorities, usage of
languages indifferent areas, implementation of the principle of
non-discrimination of the persons belonging to minorities, etc.
The main goal is to provide decision-makers at the national and international
level, experts, NGO activists and researchers with comprehensive information on
the implementation of basic principles of minority protection at the level of
national legislation in the post-Communist countries of the Balkan region. The
database will allow easy comparative analysis of practical methods and
approaches to implementation of the minority rights enshrined in the modern
international instruments.
Project:
MIRIS National Legislation Database http://www.eurac.edu/anotice/description.htm
Lead organization:
European Academy, Italy
The MIRIS system offers a comprehensive collection of
legal texts in the field of minority protection and autonomies and provides a
powerful, easy-to-use retrieval interface to access all these pieces of
information. Thus, the project aims at facilitating the research on minority
related issues of the target group consisting of experts, public officials,
researchers, minority representatives and NGOs. The working languages are both,
English and the official language of the state concerned.
The data and documents stored in MIRIS include state reports, recent national
legislation, case law, reports of NGOs and minority organisations, as well as
background information and analysis on all member states of the Council of
Europe. This huge amount of data and documents is complemented with
meta-information and a specific domain ontology, which will be stored in a
knowledge base and provide the basis to offer powerful and efficient search and
retrieval facilities. The following user-interaction modes are provided:
browsing, full-text search, advanced and content-based search, automatic report
generation and comparative studies between different countries.
Furthermore an authoring tool is provided permitting lawyers involved in the
project to easily edit documents and document-related information via any
standard browser.
The database will be linked with the network of minority dailies which will
provide daily news about minorities.
Project:
Advancing the Interpretation of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities through State Practice
Lead organization:
ECMI, Germany
The aim of this European Centre for Minority Issues project is to create a comprehensive primary source material reference database in which scholars may contribute to an academic forum concerning the interpretation and application of the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities. The Framework Convention is the first multilateral instrument to provide a comprehensive set of protections for minority groups. However, as with any international agreement that deals with politically sensitive issues such as minority rights, the provisions of these agreements are invariably general in nature. The importance of this landmark multilateral instrument warrants an analytical examination of the primary source material to assist in determining the scope of application of each provision of the Framework Convention. The source material to be examined includes the State reports as a means of determining State practice and obtaining opinio juris in the creation of customary law; the travaux preparatoires, in order to trace the evolution of each provision throughout the drafting process; and provisions from various international instruments created under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), which were influential in the formation of the Framework Convention. The activities of the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts for the Protection of National Minorities (DH-MIN) and the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the Venice Commission), which was influential in the creation of the Framework Convention will be included in this project, along with case-law and the decisions released by various monitoring bodies concerning provisions from international instruments which were influential in the creation of the Framework Convention will be summarised, detailing the facts, the main points of law and the decisions released in these cases.