Geneva (Switzerland), 28-29th November 2024

The purpose of the Forum on Minority Issues is to provide a platform for promoting dialogue and cooperation on issues pertaining to minorities, whether national, ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. The Forum meets annually and is open to numeros actors, such as States, regional organizations, non-governmental organizations or academics and experts. The 17th session of the Forum which took place in November 2024 was an opportunity to identify existing challenges and best practices at all levels, to find suitable solutions to promote better representation of minorities in public spaces.

OIDEL director Ignasi Grau was invited to participate in a panel on minority representation in education alongside Jacqueline Hatch, the co-director of the Refugee Educational Lab (or REAL), and David Smith, professor at the school of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. The panel focused on the support that education can provide to students from minority groups and on the need to integrate minorities in the elaboration of educational policies. Ignasi Grau pointed out that we often focus on how minorities are portrayed. However, even more important is ensuring that what is considered common does not conflict with the ethos of the groups exposed to this teaching. Therefore, it is essential for minorities to participate in the construction of what is common, at least to ensure they can participate on equal footing in the major symbols and shared coexistence rules. The panel was followed by an interactive dialogue, in which civil society representatives and States raised further concerns about the representation of minorities in education, notably mother tongue education and exclusion and discrimination of minorities consultation of minorities in the public policies for education.

To OIDEL’s contribution: