The Supreme Court hesitates on the interpretation of art. 27 In “United Nations Convention on Civil and Political Rights” (SP). This conclusion is justified, because the Supreme Court in 2021 gives a completely different understanding of the content of this article in the Fosen judgment than in the Nesseby judgment rendered in 2018.

Article 27 of the SP specifies that “In States where ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, with other members of their group, to cultivate their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion or to use their own language.“.

The word denied is central here. In the authoritative English text, the word “denied» which means to deny or deny.

In Nessebydommen, the first voter who received approval for his considerations declares the following:

“I consider it clear that there is no violation of Article 27 of the SP. What this provision affects is the denial (“denial”) of minorities, including indigenous peoples, of the right to exercise their culture. I am content here to refer to the declaration of the UN Human Rights Committee in the Howard v. Canada case, July 26, 2005, point 12.7. The commission is based here on the fact that there is only a violation if a measure involves a “de facto denial” of the right to practice culture. (HR-2018-456 P article 165)

Based on this consideration, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that if a certain resident of Nesseby was not granted the right to manage open land in the municipality, then Art. 27 is violated.

In Fosen, the Supreme Court established a new understanding of the content of art. 27.

There, the Supreme Court assumes that the term “denied» means the same thing as reduction. They therefore assume that “denied” means something quite different from “denial of fact of» (real negation).

The first voter declared that “In this context, my conclusion is that there will be a violation of the rights guaranteed by Article 27 of the SP if the intervention leads to significant negative consequences on the possibility of cultural practice. He was approved for this understanding.

There is a significant difference of opinion between “effective denial” and “significant adverse consequences”. Word “significantly» is also a floating word in which we can put many things.

Following the Nesseby ruling, an incitement campaign was carried out in the media against the anti-Sami attitude of the Supreme Court. This resulted in an editorial in the newspaper “Sagat” dated 6.5.19. (“Sagat” is classified as a Sami newspaper.) The title of the leader is: “Same hatred at the Norwegian Supreme Court”and in the text we can read, among other things, that “Direct attitudes of hatred towards the Sami flourished in the Supreme Court of Norway.”

Could it be this campaign of incitement that led the Supreme Court to acquire a new understanding of the word “denied”, that is, to hesitate?