Armenia has made it possible to learn Assyrian, Kurdish and Yezidi in schools where large numbers of these minorities are being taught, Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland said during the Conference “Minorities and Minority Languages in a Changing Europe”.

The conference is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages.

“The treaties have confirmed circumstances in which individuals have the right to education in their national language, rather than the language of the nation state in which they live. And Armenia, Poland, and Montenegro are among those that have worked with our Organisation to improve access to minority language education in line with our legal instruments,” Jagland said.  “While these states may have more work to do, they have taken valuable steps forward, sometimes despite political pressure and financial constraints.”