News

The Institute for Minority Rights of Eurac Research organized a webinar series investigating the challenges minorities worldwide are facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this webinar, Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark, Francesco Palermo and Sergiu Constantin discussed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on minority communities, on dynamics between centres and peripheries, and on inter-state relations. The immediate reactions to the pandemic included a "war rhetoric" with an explicit or tacit requirement of loyalty and obedience, closure of borders, and centralization from the territories to the centre and from parliaments to executives. The pandemic shows time and again that there is no one-size-fit-all solution for cultural and territorial governance. Watch the webinar video or read the webinar brief​.​​​

Romania's Senate rejected a plan to establish an autonomous region for ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania. Under the proposal, Hungarian would have become a second official language in state institutions in the area known as Szeklerland. The region would have flown its own flag and had the right to pass its own laws and manage its own finances. Romanian President accused the Social Democrats, Romania's largest party which is currently in opposition, of striking a secret deal with Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban and plotting to give "Transylvania to the Hungarians". Read more… 

Residents of Ethiopia's Sidama zone voted in favor of a new federal region, with about 98.5% choosing autonomous rule, the country's electoral board said on Saturday. Voter turnout was 99.8%. By creating their own federal region, the Sidama — Ethiopia's fifth most numerous ethnicity — hope to regain control of land resources, political representation as well as to reaffirm their cultural identity. Read more...​

ENTAN is a COST Action aimed at examining the concept of non-territorial autonomy (NTA). The network particularly focuses on NTA arrangements for reducing inter-ethnic tensions within a state and on the accommodation of the needs of different communities while preventing calls to separate statehood. The main objective is to investigate the existing NTA mechanisms and policies and to develop new modalities for the accommodation of differences in the context of growing challenges stemming from globalisation, regionalisation and European supranational integration. The network fosters interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary group work, and provides for training and empowerment of young researchers, academic conferences and publications, as well as for the dissemination of results to policy makers, civil society organisations and communities. Read more…​

Indian government abolished Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which is the legal basis for the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir. It is an unprecedented move likely to spark unrest. Article 370 guaranteed the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (including the right to have its own Constitution) and restricted the legislative power of the Indian parliament to defence, external affairs and communications. However, the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir has been gradually and deliberately eroded through Presidential Orders with explicit approval of the India's Supreme Court. Read more…​