The State Duma Committee for Nationalities is preparing for the forthcoming autumn session of the parliament. Among priority initiatives on which the final stage of work will be conducted before entering the State Duma, the head of the committee, Ildar Gilmutdinov, listed laws on territories of traditional natural resource use, on the federal registry of information on small peoples, on the establishment of the institution of ethnological impact assessments for major industrial projects in places where small indigenous peoples traditionally reside, as well as the bill on social and cultural adaptation and integration of foreign citizens in the Russian Federation.
According to Ildar Gilmutdinov, it will also focus on the training of specialists in the field of national and international relations: "It's a big problem for us. Unfortunately, we have neither ready-made personnel nor specialists, both at the federal, regional, or municipal level, who could do good work in the field of interethnic relations. Though the Moscow State University, after creating a center for retraining and training specialists, has started to work on this a little, it is not enough".
In addition, according to the head of the Duma committee, the deputies want to revise the national program on national policy together with officials from the Federal Agency for Nationalities: "We adopted it, but expressed the idea that it is not filled with the necessary content. Unfortunately, only a number of positions were outlined. There are practically no means for supporting the activities of Cossack organizations. How can a state program do without any means? Only 3 million rubles were allocated for the support of Russian language and native languages. It is necessary to search funds to support the development of Russian language and native languages within the framework of this section, without duplicating other programs, for example in the field of education.
At the same time, the committee plans to discuss with journalists the topic of informational coverage of the national policy, interethnic relations, as well as to continue interaction with youth organizations and federal national cultural autonomies.
