Statement Of the representative of the Russian Federation on Item 2: “Human rights and minority language education” 28 November 2019 Madame Chair, Access to education in one’s mother tongue is crucial for people belonging to national minorities, not only in the context of preserving their ethnic and linguistic identity, but is fundamental to the realization of a wide range of other rights, including political, economic, social and cultural rights. We welcome the regional forums on issues related to minority education held by the Special Rapporteur. We carefully studied the recommendations, particularly those of the Brussels Forum. We believe this is a step in the right direction that will allow us to focus on relevant issues in the specific region. We support the development of recommendations to the European Union regarding the need to develop specific documents and effective control mechanisms to protect minorities and their languages. Unfortunately, violations of minority rights that are unacceptable in certain EU member states, are currently justified in others under the pretext of the characteristics of their historical development. As a result, for almost three decades, Russian and other minority schools continue to close in the Baltic countries, teachers from minority schools are fired due to their insufficient knowledge of the state language, and bilingual schools are reformed. At the same time, the opinions of teachers, students, and their parents are not taken into account, nor demographical indicators, when a significant number of people speak their native language. The lack of an adequate assessment by the international society of such reforms leads to the fact that such discriminatory policies are copied by other states. In Ukraine, all recent legislative initiatives in the field of education and the use of mother tongues are, in essence, aimed at the exclusion of representatives of minorities from all spheres of public life. We call upon the Special Rapporteur in the continuation of work on this issue to monitor the implementation by individual states of the recommendations developed by him. Thank you for your attention.