RIGA - A high commissioner from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an ad hoc United Nations body, took Latvian officials to task for not improving the situation for minorities in the country.
OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Knut Vollebaek, who completed a three-day working visit to Latvia on April 23, said the country needs to improve the naturalization process.
"The number of non-citizens still is high 's about 372,000 I am told 's and I intend to discuss with the Latvian government ways that I can help speed up the naturalization process," Vollebaek told reporters on the first day of his visit.
"It is my firm position that the Latvian government should devote more attention to identify the causes of this," he said.
The OSCE high commissioner was the latest in a string of integration specialists from the EU and the U.N. who have visited the country over the past year. Almost all the reports have held negative conclusions about Latvia's progress in integrating minorities 's conclusions which never fail to rankle government officials and nationalist Latvians.
Vollebaek urged the country to grant suffrage rights to non-citizens, particularly in municipal elections. He said the move could help get minorities involved in local issues and motivate them to go through the naturalization process.
"Having a stake in and a voice on municipal matters could in fact stimulate greater interest amongst non-citizens in the public debate on the national level and to naturalize," he said.
Non-citizens in Latvia, unlike their counterparts in Estonia, do not have the right to vote in municipal elections.
Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins took a drastically different stance on the issue. He said non-citizens needed to earn the right to vote by going through the relatively simple naturalization process.
"People who want to participate in local or national elections are advised to go through the very simple process of naturalization since both the language test and the history tests are not very complicated. They should take these tests, become citizens and gain full participation," the foreign minister said.
Parliamentary Chairman Gundars Daudze used softer language in his critique of the high commissioner's recommendations, saying only that the decision to become a citizen should be considered an important step.
"The main factor is people's wish and motivation to become Latvian citizens... The decision to become a Latvian citizen should be a deliberate step, showing one's wish to integrate into the Latvian society and be loyal to the Latvian state," Daudze said following his meeting with the OSCE official.
The high commissioner shot back, saying that by allowing non-citizens to vote, leaders help increase civic participation. "I beg to disagree with the minister on this issue, because I believe the right to vote in local elections, instead of taking away some of the incentive for gaining citizenship, might work the other way and work towards integration," he said.
Not all of the high commissioner's comments were negative. One of the main goals of his visit was to evaluate integration in the school system, an area in which he said Latvia is performing well despite numerous challenges.
"Speaking of education, it should be noted that Latvia has to deal with an extremely complex legacy of the Soviet Union's assimilation policies, and therefore I support the right 's and indeed the duty of the state 's to promote national integration," he said.
Vollebaek praised the approach the education system takes to language, whereby questions are given in Latvian but students are allowed to reply in Russian.
"Teaching a part of the curriculum in the state language will help you learn Latvian. It is, however, important to monitor the quality of education and to have subjects taught through the medium of minority languages as well as to preserve minority identity," the high commissioner said.
