Speaking at a press conference devoted to the problem of Russian academic credentials' recognition in Estonia, Human Rights Center officials noted that a string of decisions made by various government agencies had led to a situation where further judicial regulation of the recognition of Russian college and university diplomas looked highly uncertain.
It is the Estonian center ENIC/NARIC that is supposed to validate Russian academic credentials, in keeping with the law on the recognition of foreign qualifications and a Feb. 9, 2004 ruling by a Tallinn district court.
The National Court ruled on May 3, 2004, however that the ENIC/NARIC center's validation decisions cannot be regarded as administrative acts and have no final say in the recognition of foreign academic credentials.
The National Court gave a new interpretation to the foreign qualifications recognition law by ruling that the final decision should rest with academic institutions and employers rather than the ENIC/NARIC center or any other relevant government agency. Human rights activists fear that this decision will lead to an increase in the number of violations as educational institutions and employers lack expertise and valid evaluation criteria to cope with the task they have been assigned by the National Court.
"According to the Lisbon Convention, the right to have one's academic credentials recognized is an essential part of the right to education. Which means that the Estonian Republic dodges Lisbon Convention provisions," argues Sergei Seredenko, a lawyer with the Human Rights Information Center.
Experts emphasize that the right to education is an alienable right of every human being and that it is consolidated in international treaties to which Estonia is signatory.
Estonia, in the meantime, has unilaterally cancelled the 1998 Russo-Estonian intergovernmental agreement on mutual recognition of academic credentials, citing the ratification and clauses of the Lisbon Convention to justify the move.
