25 How it should be done For health, social, administrative and other public services, the use of minority languages also involves issues of access, quality and equality:45 As with the implementation of the human rights of minorities in public education, the principle followed in many countries – broadly speaking – is proportionality: provision depends largely, although not exclusively, on the number and concentration of speakers. This will determine the extent to which and areas where the use of minority languages will be seen by the relevant authorities as reasonable and practicable. This is effectively what is in place in a majority of the world’s countries that use more than one language in their administration and in the delivery of public services. Not all minority languages present on a state’s territory need to be used in the area of administrative and public services – only languages where the number and concentration of speakers make it reasonable and justified, in application of the principle of proportionality. Where minorities are concentrated above a certain percentage in a given territory, region or local administration, they have the right to use their language in administrative and other public service areas to an appropriate and proportionate degree. The more serious the potential consequences are of not using minority languages in a particular area of administrative or other public services, the more responsive policymakers should be to addressing effective service delivery and communication with this segment of the public through an appropriate degree of use of the relevant languages, as in the case of the use of minority languages in public health care where effective communication can be a matter of life and death. In applying the proportional principle, the employment of bilingual or multilingual employees to provide public services in minority languages increases inclusion and the participation of minorities in public life. Innovations such as using new technologies and the Internet offer encouraging approaches to reaching small groups or widely dispersed minorities. Legislation needs to codify how and where these rights can be exercised, and ensure that effective mechanisms are in place to address and redress situations of non-compliance. Good practices • In Iceland, the authorities use seven languages in addition to Icelandic (English, Polish, Serbian/ Croatian, Thai, Spanish, Lithuanian and Russian) to communicate and provide more effective access to social or public information services through a Multicultural Information Centre and telephone information services. • During the Ebola crisis in West Africa, the health departments of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia worked with UNICEF and other international organizations to communicate more effectively in local minority languages through means such as radio dramas, printed materials, television programmes and posters to reach as many people as quickly and effectively as possible in order to save lives. • In Ireland, information from public housing services such as tenant welcome packs is provided in languages other than Irish or English (either through translation or interpretation), where appropriate and feasible, particularly if there is a large minority ethnic community in a local authority. 45 Diergaardt et al. v. Namibia (note 12).