The master graduation paper analyses the subject “Implementation of the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the protection of National Minorities by the Republic of Lithuania”. The goal of the graduation paper is to define implementation problems of the Framework Convention and to find possible solutions. At the first chapter a problem of defining a national minority in the international law and domestic law of the Republic of Lithuania is discussed. Since there is no definition of a national minority in the international law, it is being identified through analysis of international documents, traveaux préparatoires, expert opinions and doctrine. It is also analysed, if a notion in the domestic law is compatible with a conception in the international law. At the second chapter the main provisions of the Framework Convention are overviewed. Rights and freedoms of persons belonging to national minorities are analysed according to the case-law of the Advisory Committee of Council of Europe Committee of Ministers. Due to this analysis the main problems of implementation of the Framework Convention by Member States are identified. Moreover, the best practises according to the opinion of the Advisory Committee are presented, which may be used while protecting national minorities in Lithuania. At the third chapter implementation of the Framework Convention by the Republic of Lithuania is discussed. According to the analysis of the Advisory Committee the main problems of... [to full text]

Darbo tikslas - atskleisti teisinio ugdymo ypatumus tautinių mažumų mokyklose. Tyrimo objektas - tautinės mažumos mokyklos mokinių rašinių analizė teisinio ugdymo aspektu. Tikslui pasiekti vadovautasi moksline ir metodine literatūra, naudotas kokybinis tyrimo metodas – rašinių analizė. Darbo uždaviniai: 1) Išnagrinėti teisinio ugdymo ir tautinių mažumų sampratas; 2) Apžvelgti pagrindinius įstatymus, reglamentuojančius tautinių mažumų mokyklų teisinį švietimą; 3) Ištirti mokinių teisinį sąmoningumą rašto darbuose. Pirmoje dalyje išnagrinėtos ugdymo bei teisinio ugdymo sąvokos. Taip pat analizuojami teisės aktai, reglamentuojantys teisinį ugdymą. Antroje dalyje aptarta tautinių mažumų sąvoka ir išanalizuoti dokumentai, reglamentuojantys tautinių mažumų švietimą. Trečioje dalyje analizuojami mokinių rašiniai teisinio ugdymo aspektu. Darbą apibendrina išvados, teigiančios, kad tautinių mažumų mokiniai laiko save Lietuvos piliečiais. Jų pilietinė savimonė remiasi teisės normomis, galiojančiomis šalyje. / The aim of work – to reveal peculiarities of legal education at national minorities school. The object of this work – national minorities schoolchild’s analysis of an essay by legal education aspect. Scientific and methodical literature was going to reach the aim, was used a qualitative research – essays analysis. Tasks of the work: 1) To scrutinize the terms of legal education and national minorities; 2) To review the main laws which regulates the legal education of the school of national minorities; 3) To explore schoolchild’s consciousness at written work. The first part of this paper explore the terms of the education and legal education. Besides, will be analysed the legislation of legal education. The second part tries to scrutinize the term of national minority and to review the main laws which regulates the legal education of the school of national minorities. The third part explores an essays of schoolchild’s by legal education aspect. Conclusions of this work state that the national minorities schoolchild believe themselves as the citizens of Lithuania. Their civil self-consciousness is in conformity with the rules initiated in State.

This thesis argues that French Canada did not simply fragment into regional and provincial identities during the 1960s and 1970s, but was also kept afloat by the simultaneous emergence of a francophone supranational reference. In order to demonstrate this argument, I have studied the archives of the Richelieu movement, a French Canadian society founded in 1944 in Ottawa, which was internationalized in the hopes of developing relationships amongst the francophone elite around the world. This thesis also considers the process of democratization and the evolution of conceptions of altruism within the movement, signalling again the degree to which the global project of the Francophonie captivated the spirits of Francophones in North America, but also in Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. ~ Cette thèse démontre que le Canada français ne s’est pas seulement fragmenté en identités régionales et provinciales durant les années 1960 et 1970, mais qu’il a également été revitalisé par la constitution simultanée d’une nouvelle référence supranationale francophone. Afin de démontrer cette thèse, nous avons fait appel aux archives du mouvement Richelieu, une société canadienne‐française fondée à Ottawa en 1944, qui s’est internationalisée en vue de développer des rapports entre les élites francophones du monde. Cette thèse fait également quelques détours par la démocratisation et l’altruisme au mouvement pour illustrer à quel point le projet mondialisé de la Francophonie a captivé les esprits des francophones de l’Amérique du Nord, mais aussi ceux de l’Europe, des Antilles et de l’Afrique.

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This essay is an attempt to explain and assess the liberal nationalists’ view on the problems of the legitimacy of nationalism and cultural rights. I want to look at some theories over the past fifteen years that normatively evaluate ‘nationalism’ according to the liberal principles. The main focus of the first part will be on three questions, which are: the question of legitimacy (is nationalism permissible?), the question of justice (is nationalism required?), and the question of appropriate format (what forms of nationalism and nationalistic policies are considered as legitimate and just?). In the second part, by considering the alleged conflict between the ‘minority nation-building’ and the ‘majority nation-building’ in multination countries, I will examine two models for resolving this conflict: ‘Multinational Federalism’ and ‘Transnational Federalism’. I will argue that, though most liberal nationalists support the former model, they fail to provide a convincing normative ground for justifying Multinational Federalism and stopping national minorities from secession. The liberal nationalists’ arguments for necessity of nationalism, ironically, undermine their own claim about normative importance of Multinational Federalism in comparison to Transnational Federalism. This is what I call ‘the paradox of liberal nationalism’. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2007-10-09 00:53:12.467

This study asks how national power capacity and state structures are reconfigured when faced simultaneously with the power diffusion impact of political globalization---defined as a consensus of ideas and subsequent pressure on states for further democratization and liberalization---and the power maximization demands of internal and external security dilemmas. Hypothesizing a resulting bifurcation of such state structures, this study identifies and explores the transformation dynamics of states being pressured by these two forces through an in-depth analysis of the Turkish case. First, the roots of the two pressures are explored from the late Ottoman and early Republican eras, and a pendulum period is observed, in which the incompatibility of the two drives becomes accepted. As the inevitability of the transformation from more authoritarian to more liberal regimes is realized, a resulting gradual development and institutionalization of a dual state structure into hard and soft agendas and, eventually, realms is shown. Within such a structure, a compromised governance system emerges, in which both a form of democracy and democratization is maintained for legitimacy purposes, and a strong power-holding mechanism, unaccountable to the public, is preserved as an ultimate guard to maintain control over the transformation process. An analysis of changes in the Turkish constitutions is used to reveal traceable reflections of the gradual expansion and consolidation of the hard realm. The actual workings of a dual state structure, revealing the realms' actors, their domestic and external allies, their positions, arguments and rhetoric, is provided by focusing on the clash in the Turkish case over the issue of minority rights in relation with the country's application process for European Union membership. The study identifies the new security dilemma of these countries as being the challenge of securing the inevitable transformation, including the

This study examined how gay men construct a gay identity and have relationships within a heteronormative (Kritzinger, 2005) society in South Africa. The impact of this study is that homophobia continues to persist within different levels of society despite progressive legislation (Republic of South Africa, 1998 / Republic of South Africa, 2006 / Republic of South Africa, 2007), that gender binarisms persist in gay relationships, that power differences impact and shape gay relationships, and that resistance and transgression to heteronormativity were present in some of the narratives. The qualitative study employed a semi-structured guide with in-depth interviews. Sampling procedures that were utilised were snowball sampling in a non-probability sample. Data was collected via an MP3 player and each interview was transcribed and analysed using content and narrative analysis. I-poems using the listening guide (Gilligan et al, 2003) were constructed in six of the narratives. The sample distribution included 15 gay men aged between 20 to 46 years. Of these, 12 participants were black (6 coloured, 3 Indians, 3 African) and 3 were white.

In this thesis, I examine how colonial constructs on Chinese culture affects people's views toward sexual minorities in Hong Kong. In the first Chapter, I explain the shift of my research focus after I started my research. I also conduct a brief literature review on existing literature on sexual minorities in mainland China and Hong Kong. In the second Chapter, I examine interviewees' accounts of family pressure and perceived conflicts between their religious beliefs and sexual orientation. I analyze interviewees' perceptions of social attitudes toward sexual minorities. Hidden in these narratives is an internalized colonial construct of Chinese culture in Hong Kong. This construct prevented some interviewees from connecting Christianity with oppression toward sexual minorities in Hong Kong. In the third Chapter, I examine the rise of right-wing Christian activism in pre- and post- handover Hong Kong. I also analyze how sexual-minority movement organizations and right-wing Christians organized in response to the political situation in Hong Kong. Then, I present the result of content analysis on debates around two amendments to the Domestic Violence Ordinance (DVO)-the first legislation related to sexual minorities in Hong Kong after handover. I draw on data from online news archives and meeting minutes and submissions of the Legislative Council (LegCo). Based on the rhetoric of US right-wing Christians' "(nuclear) family values," Hong Kong right-wing Christians supported excluding same-sex cohabiting partners from the DVO. This rhetoric carved out a space for different narratives about "Chinese culture" and "Chinese family." These different versions of Chinese culture matched diasporic sentiment toward the motherland and gained currency from post-handover political landscape and power configuration in Hong Kong. These versions also revealed the colonized and diasporic mindset of opponents of the amendments; these mindsets also reflect the same internalized colonial construct of "Chineseness" my interviewees have. Based on analyses of interview data in Chapter II and in Chapter III of how people view sexual minorities, I argue that a colonial diasporic psyche aptly captures people's views toward sexual minorities in Hong Kong. Since the political situation and DVO are specific to Hong Kong, I do not include interviewees who are not of Hong Kong origin in this thesis.

Pre-college programs designed to increase the intentions of minority students to attend college have become commonplace on many college campuses. Evaluation of such programs has focused on measuring the effectiveness of the delivery of services provided to students. At other times, evaluation of program effectiveness focused on measuring increases in individual skill development. Both of these components of evaluation are acceptable means of determining program effectiveness but have limitations because they may not address students intentions to attend college.This study as evaluation research was designed to investigate whether student participation in the Summer Scholars Residential Program resulted in changes in the intentions of the students toward participation in higher education. The population of the study was 184 minority junior high and senior high school students in Indiana who attended a week long Summer Scholars Residential Program 1992.Several methodologies were used to gather evidence regarding students' experiences in the program. One hundred and eighty four pre- and 164 post-questionnaire instruments were completed by students during four separate weeks of participation in the Scholars Program. A select number of 10 students maintained journals of their experiences. Finally, 21 students responded to interviews after one year to gather evidence on the long term effects from participation in the Scholars Program and to obtain more specific feedback from students.Comparisons were made between student responses on the pre-questionnaire and the post-questionnaire as one method of determining possible changes in students' intentions to pursue higher education before and after participating in the Scholars Program. Other comparisons were made of students intentions to enroll in specific courses in high school including pre-college courses. The evidence gathered showed that participation in the Scholars Summer Program did reinforce and increase students' intentions to attend college. In addition, the follow-up phone interviews showed that students changed their courses in high school from general to college preparatory. / Department of Educational Leadership

Counselors and counselors-in-training are expected to provide affirmative and competent counseling services to lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) clients. Counseling self-efficacy, a construct based on the tenets of social cognitive theory, is a useful framework to assess counselors’ perceptions regarding their competencies in providing such services. To date, little is known about factors that may either enhance or inhibit counselors’ LGB counseling self-efficacy beliefs. In the present investigation, structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to test two conceptually derived models consisting of predictors of counselor trainees’ LGB counseling self-efficacy beliefs. For the first model, trainees’ LGB focused personal, clinical, and training experiences, sexual identity exploration and commitment, attitudes towards LGB persons, and levels of lesbian and gay (LG) threat were examined in order to determine their levels of influence on counselor trainees’ LGB counseling self-efficacy. The second model was a mimic model that tested whether counselor trainees’ sexual orientation identities moderated the other variables’ influences on LGB counseling self-efficacy. The second model also examined differences in self-efficacy beliefs between heterosexual and non-heterosexual participants. These models were tested on 406 counselors-in-training who were recruited via the Internet. Using Structural Equation Modeling analyses it was found that LGB attitudes and LG threat both significantly and partially mediated the relationship between counselor trainees’ experiences and LGB counseling self-efficacy such that, for trainees’ with positive attitudes and lower LG threat, more experiences predicted higher LGB counseling self-efficacy. Sexual identity exploration and commitment, however, did not predict LGB counseling self-efficacy. The mimic model indicated that counselor trainees’ sexual orientation identities were a significant predictor of LGB counseling self-efficacy. It was also discovered that trainees’ experiences and LG threat remained significant predictors of self-efficacy while LGB attitudes did not. Finally, it was found that non-heterosexual trainees endorsed higher efficacy as compared to heterosexual trainees. A post-hoc analysis was conducted to determine whether sexual identity exploration and sexual identity commitment differentially impacted LGB counseling self-efficacy. Results suggested that sexual identity exploration fully mediated the relationship between counselor trainees’ experiences and self-efficacy. Yet, sexual identity commitment did not significantly impact self-efficacy. The findings from this investigation reveal the importance of counselor training and clinical experience on LGB counseling self-efficacy, as well as the importance of exploring barriers on LGB counseling self-efficacy. This study’s strengths, limitations, contribution to research, training, and practice are discussed, as are suggestions for future research. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services