The 1st Congress of the Free Nations League in Estonia

Uralic Centre is honoured to co-host the 1st Congress of the Free Nations League in Estonia! Let’s explore the reasons behind this historic initiative, writes writes Uralic Center on Facebook.

URALIC stands firmly behind the mission and goals of the Free Nations League (FNL), including the pursuit of real sovereignty for indigenous peoples held captive by the Russian Federation. We recognize the great potential in Лига Свободных Наций / Free Nations League as a network uniting independent national movements in today’s Russian Federation. The Congress in Estonia will be the first of its kind in FNL’s history and URALIC is proud to be a part of this.

The two cornerstone human rights treaties – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) state in their opening articles: “All peoples have the right of self-determination”. For URALIC, these are not empty words, but something real, a kind of a world view. This is something we clearly share with FNL, which forms a solid basis for cooperating on specific joint initiatives like this upcoming congress.

The decision to host the congress in Estonia builds upon the momentum from the Erzya National Congress held in Otepää, Estonia in September 2022. This event not only inspired several other national movements but also garnered the attention of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. The 1st Congress of the Free Nations League is expected to have a profound impact, with leaders from many national movements attending.

With its first-hand experience of Russian colonisation and deep ties with Finno-Ugric and other indigenous peoples of Russia, Estonia is the best-suited country in the EU and the wider West to support and empower independent national movements in RF. Both substantively and symbolically we are well-positioned to have serious impact in this field and, in our view, the Estonian state and society should actually do much more in this direction, writes Uralic Center.

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