From Arctic communities desiring to receive public services in their own languages, to the Arhuaco people in Colombia who still speak Ika, indigenous people across the world are determined to keep their mother tongues alive.
On Friday, the UN launched the International Decade of Indigenous Languages to help them survive, and protect them from extinction.
Indigenous Peoples are guardians to almost 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity.
If we are to successfully protect nature, we must listen to indigenous peoples, and we must do so in their own languages.
#IndigenousLanguages
Full remarks: https://t.co/G7czpSSbRe https://t.co/bFS5DVaIt5
UN_PGA
The Organization has long advocated for indigenous peoples, who are the inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment.
A benefit for all
Preserving their languages is not only important for them, but for all humanity, said the President of the UN General Assembly, Csaba Kőrösi.
“With each indigenous language that goes extinct, so too goes the thought: the culture, tradition and knowledge it bears. That matters because we are in dire need of a radical transformation in the way we relate to our environment,” he said.
Indigenous people make up less than six per cent of the global population but speak more than 4,000 of the world’s roughly 6,700 languages, according to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).
Alarm bells ringing
However, conservative estimates indicate that more than half of all languages will become extinct by the end of this century.
Mr. Kőrösi recently returned from the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal and left convinced that “if we are to successfully protect nature, we must listen to indigenous peoples, and we must do so in their own languages.”
Indigenous peoples are guardians to almost 80 per cent of the world’s remaining biodiversity, he said, citing data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“Yet every two weeks, an indigenous language dies,” he remarked. “This should ring our alarms.”
The General Assembly President urged countries to work with indigenous communities to safeguard their rights, such as access to education and resources in their native languages, and to ensure that they and their knowledge are not exploited.
“And perhaps most importantly, meaningfully consult indigenous peoples, engaging with them in every stage of decision-making processes,” he advised.