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• Peoples and nations today: Western Sahara

  Date: 04/12/2009

  DOSSIER. The Sahrawi nation is made up only of a few hundred thousand people, 160,000 of which still live in the Tindouf refugee camps of South-West Algeria for the last 30 years, making it one of the nations in the world with the highest number of refugees. The Western Sahara conflict is still in a deadlock, and in the last years has witnessed a declining interest by the international community and Morocco’s unwillingness to reach a peaceful solution. [+]

• Irish language: 'It has been very shocking to the community to lose two newspapers in six months'

  Date: 27/11/2009

  INTERVIEW. Janet Muller speaks to Nationalia. She is the Chief Executive of Pobal, a partnership that coordinates and supports the groups in favour of Irish language in Ireland. Muller explains the current state of the Celtic language, especially in the media. Two important Irish language papers closed down during 2008. Mairtin O'Muilleoir, former publisher of one of them, then said: 'To lose one newspaper in Lá Nua is a tragedy but to lose two with Foinse closing is just plain carelessness.' [+]

• Morocco launches first public Amazigh language TV ever

  Date: 20/01/2010

  NEWS IN BRIEF. The Tamazight channel will be in its initial testing period until March · It will broadcast 70% of its contents in Amazigh with subtitles in Arabic. [+]

• Official status for Catalan in the EU is a must, Catalan government says

  

  Date: 18/01/2010

  Vice-President of Catalonia Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira invited the representatives of the EU state members to reflect on 'the anomaly' of excluding Catalan from the languages with official status in Europe · Next European Commissioner for Culture, Education and Multilingualism says EU has to 'go beyond' the number of languages currently recognized by the Union. [+]

• Italian and Austrian dual citizenship requested by government party in South Tyrol

  Date: 13/01/2010

  NEWS IN BRIEF. The SVP has launched a signature petition campaign and held talks with an Austrian parliamentary commission. [+]

• Cyprus runs out of chances for reunification

  Date: 12/01/2010

  Governments from the island’s Greek and Turkish areas have started the last round of talks before the presidential elections in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus · Greek Cypriots have rejected a proposal made by Turks while sensitive issues such as borders and land ownership are yet to be dealt with. [+]

• Martinique and Guiana say no to more devolution

  

  Date: 11/01/2010

  Citizens from these two territories under French administration are in favour of keeping the status quo · They will continue to be overseas departments with a very limited degree of self-rule, as low as any other region in metropolitan France · Most local politicians were in favour of more powers, but fear of economic side-effects of autonomy prevailed. [+]

• Mass protests in Egypt against Copt killings

  

  Date: 07/01/2010

  Police clashed in Nag Hammadi with thousands of demonstrators protesting against the killing of 7 Coptic Christians, who were shot down on the Orthodox Christmas Eve when coming out of mass · It is the severest attack in recent years · Members of the Coptic Church say they had received death threats. [+]

• Morocco announces autonomy plan for Western Sahara

  

  Date: 04/01/2010

  The move has been announced by king Mohammed VI in the context of a general descentralisation plan for Morocco · Sahrawi top leader says Morocco’s measure is only an “escape forward” and does not concern Western Sahara. [+]

• Pro-Kurdish deputies of banned DTP to stay in Turkish Parliament as BDP members

  

  Date: 23/12/2009

  The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), set up last May, will be the parliamentary group of the Kurdish deputies as long as independent deputy Ufuk Uras joins it · Kurds threatened to leave the parliament after the Turkish Constitutional Court shut down the DTP party and banned 37 of its members from politics. [+]

• Aragonese and Catalan languages recognised by the assembly of Aragon

  

  Date: 18/12/2009

  The Languages Act has been approved, but keeps Spanish as the only official language while acknowledging the autonomous community’s own minoritised languages as 'original and historical' · PSOE (Spanish Labour) and CHA (Leftist Aragonese nationalists) voted in favour of it, whilst PP (conservative Spanish nationalists) and PAR (regionalists) voted against it. IU (Spanish Left) abstained · A Language Supreme Council is to advise the government on language issues. [+]