Julie Ringelheim

Between Identity Transmission and Equal Opportunities: The Multiple Dimensions of Minorities' Right to Education

Implementing the right of minorities to education raises a fundamental problem for international human rights law: how to ensure equal opportunities for minorities in education while attending to their special needs, whether cultural or socio-economic needs? While the objective of equal opportunities seems to be best served by promoting identical and integrated education for all children, this entails a risk of eroding minorities’ specificities and furthering assimilation. Conversely, whereas separate schooling in the minority language or religion may appear as the best way to protect minorities’ distinct identity, it may jeopardize their integration in the broader society. But even from the sole viewpoint of equal opportunities, integrated education may reveal ambivalent: Where a minority is especially disadvantaged, children may experience difficulties in competing with other children in a common education system. This may compromise the actual benefit they draw from education and eventually their integration in society. This paper explores how international human rights law deals with this double difficulty. Examining in particular the work of the Advisory Committee on the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, it argues that international human rights law favors integrated over separate education. Yet, at the same time, it increasingly calls for a transformation of the content and modalities of the instruction provided in common educational establishments. On the one hand, the development of multicultural and intercultural forms of education is seen as a means to allow the minority to be taught, and obtain recognition of, its own culture within common schools. On the other hand, the introduction of special measures may be required to compensate the social disadvantage experienced by certain minorities and achieve effective equality.