A/HRC/61/41 linked to local authorities’ decisions and to the privileged position of the Georgian Orthodox Church.39 5. Marginalization 66. Marginalization is usually not grounded in positive law provisions, making this form of discrimination more difficult to arrest. It is the result of a combination of discriminatory social behaviours and the lack of efforts from the authorities to prevent and condemn such practices. Marginalization may be spatial, as is the case for Roma communities in Eastern Europe, which often live in segregated settlements with limited access to public services. It can also be territorial, as areas inhabited by minority communities are often less equipped with public infrastructure and services than the rest of the country (see para. 61 above). Many such communities lack permanent local healthcare facilities, advanced schools and affordable transportation options. 40 Such geographical isolation demonstrates territorial marginalization, which significantly limits opportunities for education, healthcare and infrastructure development. 67. Marginalization may also take educational forms, such as the systematic denial of access to higher education for Baha'is in the Islamic Republic of Iran. 41 Linguistic marginalization can also be seen in Ireland, where Gaelic speakers experience de facto discrimination, due to limited public services, schooling and media in their language, despite Gaelic being an official national language of Ireland.42 Marginalization based on physical characteristics or ethnicity affects persons of African descent all over the world, who face systemic socioeconomic disadvantages, as well as Indigenous populations in the Americas and Australia, who are often excluded from political and economic decision-making. 6. Capacity to organize as a minority 68. Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognizes the right to persons belonging to a minority to enjoy, in community with the other members of their group, their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion or to use their own language. This does not constitute a right to self-determination,43 but it affirms the right to the collective exercise of minority rights, raising the question of how such collective exercise of their additional minority rights 44 should be organized. It amounts to a form of self-organization, or autonomy, which can be exercised either through public authorities – State institutional structure allowing for genuine forms of decentralized powers – or private organizations, usually civil society organizations. Such autonomy may be normative, organizational or financial or ideally a combination of the three. 69. Normative autonomy refers to the capacity of minorities to adopt rules for the implementation of their rights. In some cases, local or regional authorities may allow minority communities with a relative majority at that level to exercise regulatory powers. 39 40 41 42 43 44 GE.25-20927 Council of Europe Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Fourth Opinion on Georgia, 26 June 2024, available from https://rm.coe.int/4th-opgeorgia-en/1680b08a31. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Opportunities and challenges for regional development and mining in northern Ontario, Canada, (OECD Publishing, Paris, 2021). Available from www.oecd.org/en/publications/mining-regions-and-cities-in-northern-ontariocanada_d3676159-en/full-report/opportunities-and-challenges-for-regional-development-and-miningin-northern-ontario_614ae43c.html. See A/HRC/56/22; and A/71/374. Antony Hoyte-West, “The 23rd Language: Official EU Status for Irish as Portrayed in the Republic of Ireland's English-Language Press”, English Studies at New Bulgarian University, vol. 6, No. 1. The right to self-determination is, on the contrary, clearly recognized to all peoples, according to article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations and also specifically to Indigenous Peoples, according to articles 3, 4 and 5 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (General Assembly resolution 61/295). In its general comment No. 23 (1994), the Human Rights Committee observed that article 27 established and recognized a right which was conferred on individuals belonging to minority groups and which was distinct from, and additional to, all the other rights which, as individuals in common with everyone else, they were already entitled to enjoy under the Covenant. 11