ELEN ORAL STATEMENT TO 2023 UN FORUM ON MINORITY ISSUES Session 4: Protection and promotion of the rights of persons belonging to minority groups towards cohesive societies Thank you Mr President, your Excellencies. The European Language Equality Network is the leading international organization working for the protection of European indigenous minoritised languages. Firstly, we would like to welcome the new UN SR to his post and look forward to working with him. Every day we work with our members to help them in their efforts at effective language recovery and revitalization. And every day we deal with attacks and discrimination against these languages, many of which are endangered. In terms of best practices in language protection and recovery, having an adequate legal base and funding is vital for effective language recovery. When we look at the languages that are having some success in language revitalization, such as Basque and Welsh, they all have a substantive legal base in terms of legislation that give these languages the umbrella of protection for them to conduct effective language recovery programmes. We can compare Welsh to Breton, as examples. Wales, has an autonomous government, with legislation that ensures official status and underpins Welshmedium education. In contrast, for Breton in Brittany, there is no autonomous government, no co-official status or official usage, no legal underpinning for Breton-medium education, no support for Breton language media. It means that Breton speakers are vulnerable to any government attack and underlines the need for a legal base to ensure language recovery