Články

26. 11. 2010

Exploring Cultural Diversity as a Justification of Minority Rights in the Context of Slovakia

autorka: Jarmila Lajčáková

Pripravené pre: Heritage for the Future, 2010, Budapest

Treaty of Lisbon, amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty Establishing the European Community, in its article 2.3, declares that the EU “shall respect its reach cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe‟s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced”. One of the main purposes of this conference is to explore how this provision can be utilized to promote respect of minority rights and minority cultures during the Hungarian presidency over the EU. Given the non existence of specific minority rights guarantees in the EU law, this statement can be rightly seen as a long awaited positive development. The value of cultural diversity also provides a pragmatic avenue how to defend minority rights. The purpose of my contribution is to step back and discuss some of the limitation of this approach, which has been in some cases employed by the United Nations and the Council of Europe.

na stiahnutie: Lajcakova_Heritage_for_the_Future

20. 06. 2010

Advancing Empowerment of the Roma in Slovakia through a Non-territorial National Autonomy

Autorka: Jarmila Lajčáková

Publikované: Ethnopolitics, Vol. 9, No. 2, 171– 196, June 2010

The existing integrationist approach to addressing the plight of the Roma in Slovakia has been delivering ambiguous results, often promoting Roma assimilation or simply perpetuating their exclusion. This paper proposes an alternative approach: a variant of the national cultural autonomy (NCA) combined with aspects of a joint governance model called ‘transformative accommodation’. Unlike the existing policy, the proposed model of Romani autonomy is better equipped to enable the Roma to participate in setting the parameters for the legal protection of their communities. Saliently, this approach also promises to facilitate the transformation of mainstream institutions in a way that promotes Roma inclusion into these structures. The paper outlines how to engage with models of NCA and transformative accommodation in devising affirmative action policy and membership determination.

na stiahnutie: Lajcakova_Romani_autonomy