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The UN Forum for Minorities was held in the UN at Geneva last week (12th-13th November) and gave the opportunity for a broad range of minority organisations and UN Member States to contribute to discussions on best practice in obtaining effective minority political participation.
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Communicating in minority languages equips people for the modern world by encouraging an openness to diversity and an aptitude for multilingualism, said President Neasa Ní Chinnéide to CNN news on the closing day of the Partnership for Diversity conference. It summed up the spirit of the conference which dealt with the topics of multilingualism and linguistic rights and led to a resolution calling for the abolition of language based discrimination in Europe.
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 The young Sámi rockband SomBy has won the sixth edition of the European minority song contest, Liet International, in the Frisian capital of Ljouwert / Leeuwarden.
The average age of the five members of SomBy is eighteen with lead singer, Miira Suomi, the eldest at 20. SomBy qualified for Liet International by winning the Sámi Grand Prix in Kautokeino, Norway, at Easter. In Friesland they managed to impress both the jury and the audience with the strong and powerful live performance of their rock song ‘Ii idit vel’.
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Campaigners for Occitan and Basque mobilized on Saturday at Carcassona (Carcassonne), with more than 20,000 demonstrators according to the organizers, 12 to 14,000 according to police, to call for the development for Occitan language teaching and for a public television service. 5,000 also marched in Baiona (Bayonne) calling for legislation to help regenerate Basque and all the “regional” languages in France.
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Over 50,000 demonstrators marched through Santiago the capital of Galicia on Sunday (18 October) to keep the right to study at least 50% of subjects in Galician at school and to protest against the linguistic policy of the governing conservatives, the Partido Popular. The government wants to change the existing law which makes the provision.
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Occitans, Basques, joined by Bretons, Corsicans and Alsaciens, are staging demonstrations this Saturday (24th October) calling for the French state to enact legislation to help promote their languages. The demonstrations will be in Carcassona (Carcassonne) and Baiona (Bayonne).
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While it will not become Europe's 24th "official" language, from now on Scottish Gaelic speakers can write directly to EU bodies in their mother tongue and receive a reply in Gaelic. Scottish Ministers will also use the language at EU Council meetings with other EU ministers, with Gàidhlig (Gaelic) being used for the first time at the next Council of Education Ministers meeting in November (26th-27th).
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