Minority rights and national language policy in the context of name transliteration

Facts

The author, a Latvian national of Russian ethnicity, sought to have his son’s first name and surname transliterated from Russian to the Roman alphabet on his birth certificate, as permitted under section 19 (2) of the Official Language Law. The Civil Registry Office denied the request, stating that names could only be recorded in Latvian. The author’s appeals were dismissed by various courts between 2013 and 2017. While the transliterated surname was eventually included, the courts upheld the rejection of the first name. The Supreme Court ruled that transliteration was only allowed to prevent inconsistencies in official documents, not as a general right. It distinguished the case from Raihman v. Latvia, as the son’s name had not been previously used in its original form on official documents. The Constitutional Court declined to hear the case in 2017.

The author claims that the State party’s refusal to include the transliteration of his son’s first name on official documents violates articles 17, 26, and 27 of the Covenant. He argues that this constitutes an arbitrary interference with privacy, amounts to discrimination against the Russianspeaking minority, and restricts the right to use one’s language within the community, creating unnecessary difficulties in daily life and identity verification.

Admissibility

First, the Committee determined that the author possesses victim status, as his son was directly and personally affected by the authorities’ decisions to reject his request and that the author himself was affected as he was acting on behalf of his minor son in pursuit of the alleged violation of their right to privacy and family life. Second, the Committee declared the author’s claims under article  17, 26 and 27 of the Covenant to be insufficiently substantiated and therefore inadmissible under article 2 of the Optional Protocol. The Committee rejected the author’s reference to Raihman v. Latvia, as the current case did not concern the unilateral change of an original name but rather a request to have an additional transliterated record in official documents. The author failed to substantiate how the refusal to transliterate his son’s first name would adversely affect his daily life and additionally noted that the State authorities approved the author’s transliteration of his son’s surname on official records. Additionally, in regards to article 27, the author failed to substantiate how the refusal to include the transliteration of the name would amount to a denial of the use of their own language within their community.