A/CONF.189/PC.2/22 page 10 (a) Recognition of specific rights (i) The right to carry out educational activities 26. In many States, specific provisions, including constitutional provisions, guarantee minorities the right to establish and maintain their own schools, standards for the operation of which should be the same as for other schools.24 27. The 1960 UNESCO Convention contains a provision especially intended for minorities: “It is essential to recognize the right of members of national minorities to carry on their own educational activities, including the maintenance of schools” (art. 5, para. 1 (c)). 28. Article 26 to 31 of ILO Convention No. 169 of 27 June 1989 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries also recognize the right of these peoples to establish their own educational institutions and facilities. 29. Similarly, article 13, paragraph 1, of the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities recognizes that persons belonging to a national minority “have the right to set up and to manage their own private educational and training establishments” within the framework of the education system of the State, but, in paragraph 2, it appears to indicate that the exercise of this right may depend on the minority’s financial ability: “The exercise of this right shall not entail any financial obligation for the Parties”. 30. Although there is a special provision of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities of 18 December 1992 relating to the content of education (art. 4, para. 4), there is no specific provision on the right to carry out educational activities on behalf of protected minorities. This gap does not appear to be decisive because, quite apart from any legal status this provision may have, States are bound, under article 8, paragraph 1, to respect the rights of minorities provided for in “international treaties and agreements to which they are parties” and article 8, paragraph 2, states that “the exercise of the rights set forth in the Declaration shall not prejudice the enjoyment by all persons of universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms”. (ii) Use and teaching of minority and migrant languages 31. The question of language is intimately bound up with a group’s cultural identity and therefore with its sense of dignity. The mother tongue is what enables children to “take off” intellectually once they start school and is vital to “the continuity of children’s psychomotor, and affective and cognitive development”.25 Failure to respect this linguistic identity creates a feeling of exclusion from the majority group, and of discrimination, and runs directly counter to one of the basic tenets of education recognized in every international instrument: the development of the human personality.26 On the other hand, the use of an official language, even one that is formally a foreign language, may contribute to social cohesion and help to unify the State, particularly in developing countries with great linguistic diversity, although the use of a single minority language as an official language can give rise to a situation of discrimination as between the minority languages. In such cases, paradoxical as it might seem, a foreign language