The ECMI EPP team is planning its next activities in Ukraine. A two-day seminar and a two-day conference will be organized in Kyiv and will host local and international scholars and practitioners.

The Ecmi Eastern Partnership Programme team is planning its next activities in Ukraine. This time, the EPP team will organize a two-day seminar and a two-day conference in Kyiv in May and in June 2016.

The seminar on “National Minorities, including vulnerable groups: positive actions, support and protection” is organized in cooperation with the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. The programme includes lectures delivered by international experts and discussion rounds with the participants and invited guests from the partner countries: Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. On the first day Dr. Balazs Vizi (National University of Public Service in Budapest, Hungary) will speak about positive action and special treatment of ethnic minorities, and how public support for vulnerable groups in Europe is put into action. The second day of the event will host Dr. Iulius Rostas (the Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary) for a lecture on the challenges and outcomes of the promotion of equality and public support to the Roma population in the European Union and its neighborhood.

The conference on “Non-territorial national-cultural self-government: the Ukrainian perspective” will take place in Kyiv on 2 and 3 June 2016. The conference is organized by the European Centre for Minority Issues in the framework of the Eastern Partnership Programme, in cooperation with the Kuras Institute for Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the School of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Glasgow.

The topic of the conference is non-territorial cultural self-government, or non-territorial autonomy on ethnic grounds. Generally, this concept and its analogues denote a multiplicity of organizational forms, which envisage that some issues relevant to certain ethnicities are handled within these groups through mechanisms of self-government, while avoiding the creation of territorial autonomy – i.e. administrative units in which dominance is accorded to a certain ethnic or linguistic community.

The conference seeks to analyze to what extent the topic has been studied in Ukraine; to identify the most fruitful directions of future research as well as areas and forms of future international cooperation; and to analyze the idea’s practical relevance for Ukraine and other countries of Europe and the Black Sea region, including the possible spheres and forms of practical implementation.

The conference envisages presentations by invited speakers, a panel discussion and several roundtable discussions. The keynote speakers include prominent scholars and practitioners:

• Prof. John Coakley, MRIA, on “Non-Territorial Self-Government: Issues of Definition and Analysis” (Queen’s University Belfast; University College Dublin),
• Dr. Jørgen Kühl on “How to organize effective internal minority self-government and representation? Experiences and lessons from the Danish-German borderlands and Europe” (the Executive Board of the European Centre for Minority Issues and director of the A. P. Møller Skolen in Schleswig),
• Dr. Viktor Kotygorenko on “Specifics of ethno-cultural diversity and ethno-cultural self-government in Ukraine” (Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine),
• Dr. Alexander Osipov on “Non-territorial cultural self-government from an Eastern European perspective” (ECMI).

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See also:

About the Ecmi Eastern Partnership Programme (EPP)

Other EPP updates on InfoChannel

EPP webpage

Source: ECMI InfoChannel @ European Centre for Minority Issues.