Minority Rights in the Netherlands
The Kingdom of the Netherlands will apply the Framework Convention to the Frisians.
The Framework Convention is the the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM).
The Dutch Declaration aims to restrict the application of the Framework only to the Frisian minority and should be rejected as invalid, states Minority Rights Group International (MRG).
The Dutch concept of �national minorities� is limited only to Frisians and fails to accept Roma or Sinti groups, and others including Germans, Moluccans, Moroccans, Surinamese and Turks, despite the fact that many have long histories within Dutch territory. According to MRG, which has been lobbying for Europe-wide ratification of the FCNM, all minority communities should benefit and be able to make claims on the government based on the FCNM provisions. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (Article 19) does not permit reservations to be incompatible with the object and purpose of a treaty, a provision which MRG believes also renders the Dutch Declaration invalid.
It means that the Frisians can preserve to maintain ‘their’ culture and others like Roma, Sinti, Germans, Moroccans and Chinese can not.