Alleged violation of the right to enjoy culture due to passport being issued in Ukrainian language, inadmissible as insufficiently substantiated

Facts

The author is a citizen of Ukraine of Russian origin, who claimed to be the victim of a violation of articles 17 and 27 of the Covenant. 

The author alleged that when requesting an international passport form Ukraine, his name was written in the Ukrainian language with a Latin translation, which did not take into account the author's wishes. The author claimed that the imposition by the state party authorities of the Ukrainian spelling is in breach of his rights under article 17 and 27, on the basis that the state party arbitrarily chose to spell his name in Ukrainian and not his own language.

Admissibility

The Committee noted that the state party followed the linguistic rules on transliteration according to domestic legislation, and taking into account the need for the documents to be machine-readable in Ukraine. The Committee further noted that the authors internal passport contains his name in both Russian and Ukranian languages, and further that there is no information to suggest that the state party has unlawfully or arbitrarily interfered with the authors rights under articles 17 and 27. 

On this basis, the Committee considered the communication insufficiently substantiated and therefore inadmissible under article 2 of the Optional Protocol.