ABSTRACT Sham relationship investigations in Flanders (Belgium) are multi-phased institutional procedures comprising (i) a municipal phase at the civil registry office and (ii) a judicial phase at the police office. While language rights are supposedly guaranteed for applicants on the police level, where certified sworn interpreters are provided by the State, in the municipal phase, any type of interpreter, professional or non-professional, may be used. This freedom of choice has led to disparate local practices in municipal interpreter selection procedures. We have interviewed civil servants across three different municipalities, as well as surveyed 56 municipalities on their interpreter selection practices. Of the 26 municipalities that organize interviews as part of their preliminary sham relationship investigations, 21 work with interpreters (12 ad hoc, 6 sworn, and 3 community), while 5 do not. We discuss the motivations behind these decisions and the insight they implicitly offer into the language ideological beliefs of the municipality and the civil servants implementing the policy. We have observed three main rationales: (i) judicial fencing and streamlining, (ii) institutional accommodation and (iii) institutional omission.

This article explores the extent to which making the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2006) part of domestic law, that is, incorporation, can act as a supportive mechanism in the pursuit of sign language justice. Despite parallel developments in incorporation of human rights treaties and sign language recognition, these legal processes have largely been explored in isolation of each other. Using Northern Ireland as a case study, the article argues that making the CRPD part of domestic law, in some form, provides a strategic vehicle to hold states parties to account in their actions around sign language rights. Keywords: sign language recognition; UNCRPD; incorporation; language justice; rights.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used to support medical interpreting and public health communication, yet current systems introduce serious risks to accuracy, confidentiality, and equity, particularly for speakers of low-resource languages. Automatic translation models often struggle with regional varieties, figurative language, culturally embedded meanings, and emotionally sensitive conversations about reproductive health or chronic disease, which can lead to clinically significant misunderstandings. These limitations threaten patient safety, informed consent, and trust in health systems when clinicians rely on AI as if it were a professional interpreter. At the same time, the large data sets required to train and maintain these systems create new concerns about surveillance, secondary use of linguistic data, and gaps in existing privacy protections. This viewpoint examines the ethical and structural implications of AI-mediated interpreting in clinical and public health settings, arguing that its routine use as a replacement for qualified interpreters would normalize a lower standard of care for people with Non-English Language Preference and reinforce existing health disparities. Instead, AI tools should be treated as optional, carefully evaluated supplements that operate under the supervision of trained clinicians and professional interpreters, within clear regulatory guardrails for transparency, accountability, and community oversight. The paper concludes that language access must remain grounded in human expertise, language rights, and structural commitments to equity, rather than in cost-saving promises of automated systems.

Constitutional Justice as a Language of Rights: A Semiotic Approach to Human Rights Protection in Latin America

Digital platforms offer new avenues for public service access, yet indigenous communities like Xitsonga speakers in South Africa face exclusion due to language barriers in e-government and ICT tools. This qualitative study investigates how integrating Xitsonga into digital spaces can enhance access to essential services, revealing that the current systems marginalise indigenous language users, limiting their government engagement. Framed through Decolonial Theory, Language Rights, and Ubuntu philosophy, the findings reveal that the current systems marginalise indigenous language users, limiting their government engagement. The findings underscore the need for inclusive digital policies and platform design to bridge the digital divide. The study contributes to debates on language equity, digital access, and equitable service delivery, offering actionable recommendations for policymakers.

ABSTRACT This study examines how social agents involved in Sámi education in Russia view and experience the Right to Language (RtL). Our interview analysis reveals that the component elements of the RtL are rarely recognized and are seldom regarded as relevant for language revival in the Russian Sámi school context. The perceived limited connection between the law and language revitalization appears to correlate with the experiences of weak implementation of this right. Furthermore, our investigation reveals that participants’ views on the RtL vary depending on their roles in the educational system, with social context significantly shaping their understandings of this right. The results of our local investigation have broader implications for minority and Indigenous language rights extending beyond the Russian school context. They reveal a significant reduction and erasure of the content of the RtL in state law as compared to international law, and when we consider the everyday life and social context of an ethnic minority. This paper offers a unique and detailed description of the methodological steps required to identify legal and sociological hindrances and prerequisites for Indigenous language rights development in a country like Russia, and elsewhere. It also underlines the importance of viewing the law in connection with everyday life.

Despite successive governments acknowledging and even celebrating the linguistic diversity of Sri Lanka, there is scant attention paid by the state to the preservation of the lesser-known languages of the country. This is hardly surprising, given the troubled history of negotiating the language rights of the two major communities – the Sinhalese and the Tamils – in the period following independence from the British in 1948. However, it is essential that the language situations of the lesser-known communities of the island be studied, so that, among other reasons, there is sufficient information when decisions about language preservation and language education are made. Therefore, using Spolsky’s (2004) view of the components of language policy, this study examines the language practices, language beliefs, and language interventions of one of the small but influential lesser-known language speaking communities of Sri Lanka: the Memons. This study employed a quantitative research methodology and administered a questionnaire on language usage and beliefs among 176 members of the Memon community of Sri Lanka. The findings reveal that the language use of the Memons of Sri Lanka reflects the language and language-in-education policies of post-independence Sri Lanka. The Memons have transitioned from being a largely bilingual (Memoni* and English speaking) community to a quadrilingual one. The data also reveal that the participants are committed to the notion of ‘mother tongue’ and considering Memoni as their own ‘mother tongue’. The article also discusses the various initiatives undertaken by the community members to preserve the Memoni language and concludes that, despite the concerns of the older members of the community, the Memoni language may not be as ‘endangered’ as they fear.

In a speech at the time of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), Mary Robinson, then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, remarked that the new Agreement was ‘conspicuous by the centrality it gives to equality and human rights concerns’. The GFA expressly provided that Executive and Legislative authority was to be ‘subject to safeguards to protect the rights and interests of all sides of the community’. Such safeguards included the codified incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into Northern Ireland law, undertaken through the Human Rights Act 1998 and the devolution statute. The GFA also provided for an ECHR+ ‘Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland’, envisaged as a similar set of objective human rights legal safeguards binding in a similar manner. In turn, these were to link into the flagship safeguard over the legislature – the ‘petition of concern’ (PoC) – the tabling of which was to trigger an Ad Hoc Committee on Conformity with Equality Requirements to scrutinise conformity with the ECHR and Bill of Rights. The GFA also led to Northern Ireland public authorities being bound by what became the ‘section 75’ equality duty, envisaged as an objective policy appraisal tool to equality impact assess whether proposed policies risked discriminatory detriment against nine protected grounds, and if so to prompt consideration of alternative policies.This article will reflect, over a quarter of a century on, as to the fate of these commitments and subsequent developments. The Bill of Rights was never legislated for and remains outstanding. The PoC was ‘mis-legislated’ for to the extent it has never once been able to trigger the specialist committee. During the 2011–2016 mandate it became the veto of choice, being tabled over 100 times, including to block rights and equality-based measures. To a chorus of criticism from the Council of Europe, the ‘section 75’ duty also regressed following the invention and integration of ‘good relations’ impact assessments within its paradigm, which in turn provided a blocking mechanism for rights-based policy deemed politically contentious. Furthermore, a new veto over ministerial decision-making was introduced by the St Andrews Agreement, not grounded in objective-rights based criteria but rather on whether a decision was ‘significant’ or ‘controversial’. This ‘St Andrews Veto’ required such decisions to be taken by the full Northern Ireland Executive, with three ministers able to compel a ‘cross-community’ vote, and as such was used to veto proposals on same-sex marriage, reproductive rights and minority language rights. In 2014, legal certainty over a new minority rights veto in local councils (‘call in’) was also set back when a PoC blocked definitional secondary legislation. This increased the risk of call in becoming a further political veto over rights.Combined, these developments prompt the question as to whether the intention of the GFA has been turned on its head. This article will further explore the experience of each of the mechanisms (ECHR/Bill of Rights; PoC; St Andrews Veto; Executive Agenda Veto; call in; equality impact assessments and the ‘good relations’ duty; and the revised Ministerial Code) and their impact on the governance and viability of Stormont.

The article examines how the first Belarusian newspapers in Vilna (Vilnius) 'Nasza Dola' (1906) and 'Nasza Niwa' (1906–1915) portrayed Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Belarusian relations during the revolutionary period of 1906–1907 in the Russian Empire. These newspapers emerged in a time of social democratization and national revival movements among oppressed peoples, including Belarusians and Ukrainians. Belarusian intellectuals closely followed the Ukrainian national movement, often drawing parallels between the Belarusian and Ukrainian situations – particularly in terms of cultural repression, rural demographics, and the struggle for national education. 'Nasza Niwa' regularly published content on Ukrainian cultural and political developments and was an important platform for Belarusian-Ukrainian cultural dialogue. Furthermore, 'Nasza Niwa' emphasized the importance of learning from Ukraine’s national development strategies, particularly regarding language rights and education. Ukrainian deputies in the Russian Duma were portrayed positively, in contrast to the absence of Belarusian national representation. The article also examines how Nasza Niwa covered regions with mixed Belarusian-Ukrainian populations and dialects, illustrating the fluid and shared cultural-linguistic space at the borderlands.

This article examines the convergence between anti-gender/pro-family advocacy and neoliberal development paradigms within global governance institutions, with a particular focus on United Nations spaces. While much existing scholarship frames anti-gender politics as backlash, we argue that these movements strategically align with dominant ‘smart economics’ discourses that instrumentalise cisgender, heterosexual women and girls in their reproductive years as drivers of sustainable development. Drawing on feminist and queer critiques of heteropatriarchal development frameworks and global governance, we analyse how anti-gender actors are professionalising, institutionalising, and secularising their messaging to advance exclusionary agendas under the guise of neutrality and rigour. The article adopts a qualitative, interpretive methodology based on a purposive sample of artefacts produced by leading anti-gender organisations. Our analysis reveals how these actors co-opt the language of rights and sustainable development to legitimise pro-family politics and reframe global norms in ways that reinforce heteropatriarchal authority. Rather than contesting the global development order, anti-gender actors exploit its heteronormative underpinnings, thereby complicating simplistic accounts of a normative ‘backlash’. In light of the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action that set out ambitious global commitments to gender equality, our analysis underscores the need for a structural critique of gender and development discourse and practice.

Evolution of Language Rights in South Africa: Reflections on <i>AfriForum v University of the Free State</i> and Recognition of Official Languages over 30 years

The article surveys encyclopedic publications that contain entries on Ivan Puluj (1845–1918), from the earliest references in 1898 to the present day. Special attention is given to the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary character of Puluj’s activity, which earned him international recognition. As a physicist, he is regarded among the most notable scientific figures of the late nineteenth century: his fundamental studies of cathode rays paved the way for the discovery of the electron and contributed to the emergence of X-ray science and early medical radiography. Puluj’s achievements in practical electrical engineering and invention are today represented in museums of science and technology across Europe and the United States. In the humanities, he is known as a translator of the Bible from classical languages into Ukrainian and as an advocate of education in the native language. Through numerous public essays and pamphlets, he defended the rights of the Ukrainian language and argued for the opening of a Ukrainian university in Lviv. In political writings published in German in Prague and Vienna at the beginning of the First World War, Puluj forcefully maintained that the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state was essential for peace and stability in Europe. The article also addresses widespread inaccuracies in printed and online sources concerning the life and work of Ivan Puluj, correcting them on the basis of documentary evidence.

Artificial intelligence brings both benefits and risks concerning the realisation of linguistic rights for minority language communities. In this paper, I will examine what I perceive as the most evident benefits and challenges, primarily from a techno-optimistic perspective. Before doing so, however, I will first provide a brief overview of the relevant international and EU legal framework, with a particular focus on legal attempts to define artificial intelligence and the existing regulations on linguistic rights.

The problem of the functioning of the native language and its status was and remains at all stages of the evolution of humanity and national states as one of the main and defining ones in this process. Therefore, language rights are an integral part of human and citizen rights, in particular, fundamental, natural rights. Therefore, when studying this problem, which is openly politicized today, it is necessary to take into account the consequences of such processes that took place in the past (ethnocide, lingocide, colonial violence, etc.) and are taking place today (wars to destroy nations, sovereign states, their language, culture, etc.), with the aim of adequately ensuring language rights and the mechanism of their protection in solving this problem. This article reveals the conceptual theoretical and methodological foundations of scientific research and the need to create an appropriate system of tools for the relevant topic by each researcher, as important conditions in reaching reliable conclusions. The scientist proves this with her publication, which is based on the legal status of the Ukrainian language in the space of time in ethnic Ukrainian lands that were under the jurisdiction of various foreign state entities. She emphasizes that only awareness of the need for a new approach in the methodology of scientific research, adherence to the essence of fundamental principles and justification of a comprehensive choice of research methods make it possible to obtain objective, scientifically based and convincing results, in particular conclusions and proposals that testify to the quality of research on such topics and problems. And also to find out the essence of the research problem both in terms of theory and expediency of application practice. This, in turn, complements and reveals the essence of the interpretation and use of language rights as fundamental in the history of state practice at various stages and with a projection on the solution of today’s language problems as a complex and multifactorial process and a concentrated expression of the results of political and legal activity in ethnic Ukrainian lands, which were at different times under the jurisdiction of various foreign state entities. The author of the study justifies the need to clearly define the direction of such political and legal research, take into account the specifics of these states and think over the system of tools that will be used, and be sure to adhere to the basic principles of research and cause-and-effect relationships.

Language rights are fundamental components of human rights, especially in multilingual societies where speakers of non-dominant languages often face marginalization. This paper examines the concept of language rights within legal frameworks, theoretical paradigms, historical contexts, and real-life case studies, with particular attention to how such rights are communicated and contested. Drawing on collective and individual perspectives, the study examines how language policies either empower or suppress linguistic minorities, analyzing critical case studies such as the status of the Albanian language in Greece and Italy. The paper also investigates the role of communication strategies and education systems in the protection or erosion of linguistic diversity. It argues that legal codification, political will, inclusive education, and equitable media representation are essential in promoting language rights as active and enforceable entitlements rather than abstract ideals. Ultimately, the paper underscores the need for inclusive and multilingual communication strategies that can help mediate the complexities of linguistic identity and state power. Keywords: Language rights, multilingualism, language policy, minority languages, legal frameworks, linguistic justice, communication strategies, bilingual education.

Language policy, while often framed as a technical or administrative matter, has profound legal, social, and political implications. This paper examines the conceptual evolution, theoretical frameworks, and diverse applications of language policy across multilingual and post-colonial contexts, particularly focusing on Africa and South Asia. It critically examines how language policies reflect and reinforce structures of power, often leading to social exclusion, educational inequality, and linguistic imperialism. Legal frameworks governing language use are assessed, showing how they both support and constrain language rights. The paper also explores grassroots challenges in implementing language policies in education and public administration, revealing gaps between policy rhetoric and lived realities. Through case studies and policy critiques, the research highlights how inclusive language planning, supported by equitable legal mechanisms, can advance social justice, preserve linguistic diversity, and improve governance. Ultimately, language policy must be seen not just as a linguistic issue but as a tool for democratic participation and legal empowerment. Keywords: Language policy, legal implications, multilingualism, education, language rights, post-colonial states, linguistic justice.

Sign languages have historically been excluded from legal frameworks designed to protect linguistic diversity, such as the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (the Charter). While the Charter aims to safeguard regional and minority languages, sign languages have been omitted due to misconceptions about their linguistic status, their classification as “means of communication” rather than minority languages with their own characteristics, and their frequent framing within disability rights rather than language rights. This article critically examines the legal and policy frameworks surrounding sign languages and argues for their inclusion within the Charter. Drawing on linguistic, sociocultural, and legal analyses, the article demonstrates that sign languages meet the criteria of regional and minority languages as outlined in the Charter. It explores the Council of Europe's shifting stance on sign languages, from early dismissals to more recent acknowledgments of their significance, albeit without concrete action. The study highlights the sociohistorical and sociolinguistic significance of sign languages, their role in cultural identity, and the systemic exclusion faced by Deaf communities. Furthermore, the article contends that the Charter's flexible interpretative framework allows for the incorporation of sign languages, addressing past exclusions and aligning with contemporary understandings of linguistic diversity and human rights. Ultimately, this article advocates for the formal recognition of sign languages under the Charter, urging the Council of Europe to establish a working group to address their protection and promotion. Such recognition would advance linguistic justice for Deaf communities, ensuring their full inclusion within Europe's multilingual landscape.

Abstract This article examines the tensions between the language needs of asylum seekers and how these are addressed in institutional language policy and practice, focusing on the everyday practice of asylum lawyers communicating with their clients, which is characterized by immense linguistic diversity and a high demand for language support in languages of lesser diffusion (LLDs). Based on an analysis of policy documents and ethnographic data, this article examines how asylum lawyers deal with the challenges of providing accessible and appropriate language support to clients who speak an LLD. We explore how, in the absence of clear policy guidance, lawyers develop mechanisms for monitoring interpreting quality and local strategies of linguistic tolerance that condone suboptimal forms of language support for LLDs. Our research shows how these local language policies, however well-intentioned, can jeopardize the language rights of asylum seekers and deprive them of the language support to which they are entitled.

Abstract Although Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is the cornerstone of international minority protection, its meaning remains unclear. This paper explores the real meaning of the Article, relying mainly on the interpretation of the Human Rights Committee (HRCttee). According to the HRCttee, the rights under Article 27 are ‘distinct from and additional to’ all universal individual rights under the ICCPR. Obviously, the rights of religious minorities are primarily additional to freedom of conscience and religion, the right of linguistic minorities to freedom of language use derived by the HRCttee from freedom of expression, and the right of ethnic minorities to cultural freedom (also derived from freedom of expression). However, the application of these three (primarily) private-life freedoms in the spheres of public life, presents significant problems: the great number of languages, religions and cultures seems to make a reasonable application of non-discrimination in these spheres impossible (as this would e.g. require states to officialise everyone’s language in each country). However, the paper demonstrates that human rights are (also) divided by territory and that the sub-rights of the three freedoms relating to public life ( e.g. official language rights) entitle everyone, but in only one country. As a result, a reasonable application of non-discrimination becomes possible even regarding these sub-rights. The paper then clarifies where different individuals have the said public life sub-rights and finally explores the real meaning of Article 27 minority rights in terms of material equality. Nevertheless, an important conclusion is that the minority question under Article 27 is largely a human rights question.

ABSTRACTThis article challenges claims of ‘inherent’ bilingualism in Wales’ largest prison, HMP Berwyn. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews and extensive documentary research, we find that Welsh‐speaking prisoners at this ‘flagship’ prison have experienced widespread neglect of their needs and overt interferences with their use of the Welsh language. In light of these findings, we highlight the illusory nature of Welsh language rights and reveal that prisoners endure their own identity‐specific ‘pains’ because of these failures. Our research reinforces the need for criminology to take seriously the UK's multi‐national, post‐devolution landscape and further underlines the importance of exposing utopian prison agendas to meaningful scrutiny and critique.