The aim of this article is to examine the failure of the Yezidi-Kurdish minority to attain a high level of ethnic mobilization in order to protect its political and cultural interests after the fall of the USSR and the creation of an independent Georgia in 1991. This inability has intensified the threat of the complete cultural, religious, and linguistic assimilation of the Yezidi-Kurds into the wider Georgian society, instead of allowing the minority to achieve healthy integration into society and the preservation of its ethnic identity. I argue that the convergence of three sets of factors best explains the present tenuous position of the minority. First, structural changes affected the ability of minority leaders to gather sufficient human and financial resources necessary for mobilization. Secondly, problems in determining a unified identity as well as conflicts between minority elites prevented the consolidation of the ethnic group and limited its organizational capacity. Lastly, Georgian state policies and larger societal trends have subtly contributed to the dismantling of certain core components of the Yezidi-Kurdish ethnic identity., thereby accelerating the process of assimilation. This article concludes with a discussion of the prospects of the Yezidi-Kurdish community in Georgia, arguing that only efforts to reunite the minority and cooperation with existing minority civil society structures will prevent the effective disappearance of the group in this country.

Georgia --- minorities --- Yezidi-Kurds --- ethnic identity --- assimilation

Human rights of immigrants have not been directly related to rights recognised to members of traditional minorities in some constitutional or international frameworks. However, immigration processes entail new demands of integrating linguistic rights within the public space and institutions. The Spanish example can open new challenges to multiculturalist approaches, since it brings together traditional and new linguistic diversity in a very significant level. In particular, new challenges arise in sub-state autonomous entities, as is the case in the Basque country, where linguistic diversity has been a traditional element of the society. These new multilingual realities challenge the traditional view of diversity and foce us to rethink the substantial contents of some fundamental rights in order to accommodate democratically linguistic diversity in post-modern societies.

Spain --- Basque country --- linguistic minorities --- immigrants --- linguistic diversity

In practice the Charter has created legal standards that work like individual and collective rights and that empower minority language speakers to insist upon education in minority languages, on using the languages before judicial courts and the administration, on claiming a right to receive radio and television programmes in minority languages, and on insisting to be treated in the minority language in hospitals and homes for the elderly, to name only some of the most important guarantees of the Charter.

Minority languages --- European Charter for Minority or Regional Languages --- Council of Europe