Chapter 2: Twenty-Five Years of Minority Rights Monitoring in Ukraine

Abstract The war in Ukraine is the most high-profile war in Europe since the adoption and subsequent consolidation of European minority rights standards developed in the 1990s. Using a chronological approach, this contribution uses the case study of Ukraine to illustrate significant ongoing challenges to the realisation of minority rights and to the monitoring work under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, as well as ongoing contestation and debate over its interpretation and application in specific contexts. It thereby clearly demonstrates the problems of seeing minority rights protection as a linear process of progression and socialisation rather than an ongoing process of negotiation that constantly needs to be adapted to current political realities. This is crucial to discussions not just over the future of minority rights in Ukraine but also to the future work of the Framework Convention Advisory Committee.