COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MULTICULTURALISM IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA AND REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MULTICULTURALISM IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA AND REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA

Summary/Abstract: There are almost no ethnolinguistic homogeneous states in the world. Ethnic origin, language and even religion are the basic indicators for national identification. Belonging to a different ethnic and linguistic groups within a state gives it multicultural character.According to the study of ethnic and cultural diversity made by James D. Fearon in 2003, Papua New Guinea is ranked number one of total of 160 countries on the List of Ethnic Fractionalization and Cultural Diversity. On the same list, in the region of Eastern Europe and the former USSR (which includes Yugoslavia and USSR), in terms of ethnic fractionalization, R.N. Macedonia is ranked on the eighth position with index of 0.535, i.e 72nd in the world. The diversity of countries in this study is based on "what people in the country identify as the most socially relevant to ethnic grouping". What is interesting about Papua New Guinea, it is also the country with the most spoken languages (840 languages), although only three are recognized as officially.Taking in consideration the real situation of the two countries, we can notice that in both of them, there are populations with different languages, faith and ethnic origin, but there is also difference in the constitutional regulation regarding of how the nation-state is defined, the recognition of minority communities and the use of the languages.The paper deals with comparison between the legal regulations regarding the multicultural issues in both countries. The aim of the research is to understand how the world?s most diverse lingual country deals with their differences, whether the legal regulations are sustainable and whether there are common points of comparison with the Macedonian regulations.

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