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February 20, 2017 Language Rights Need to be at the Center of Global Policy
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February 20, 2017 AT&T and DECA Present First Ever Digital You Symposium
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February 16, 2017 President Trump’s Transatlantic Skepticism Will Hurt the
United States
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February 10, 2017 OpEd: When Xenophobia Speaks Louder Than Sound Policy:
Trump’s Lack of Strategy in Africa
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February 10, 2017 Towards a New World Order
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February 7, 2017 Gitmo’s 15th and America’s 45th: Guantánamo in Trump’s
Hands
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February 6, 2017 Is the ICC Fishing in The Right Pool?
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February 3, 2017 Following in Their Footsteps: A Conversation with NASA
Astronaut Dr. Don Thomas
<http://www.diplomaticourier.com/2017/02/03/following-footsteps-conversation-nasa-astronaut-dr-don-thomas/>
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February 2, 2017 UN and World Leaders Committed to Israeli-Palestinian
Two-State Solution
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February 1, 2017 Book Review: The Death of Expertise, by Tom Nichols
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Language Rights Need to be at the Center of Global Policy
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February 20, 2017 Written by Akshan de Alwis, UN Correspondent

Languages, with their complex implications for identity, communication,
social integration, education and development, are of strategic importance
for people and planet. Yet, due to globalization processes, they are
increasingly under threat, or disappearing altogether. When languages fade,
so does the world’s rich tapestry of cultural diversity. Opportunities,
traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking and expression — valuable
resources for ensuring a better future — are also lost.

More than 50 percent of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken in the
world are likely to die out within a few generations, and 96 percent of
these languages are spoken by a mere 4 percent of the world’s population.
Only a few hundred languages have genuinely been given pride of place in
education systems and the public domain, and less than a hundred are used
in the digital world.

Cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, the promotion of education
for all and the development of knowledge societies are central to UNESCO’s
work. But they are not possible without broad and international commitment
to promoting multilingualism and linguistic diversity, including the
preservation of endangered languages.

While the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) has signed an agreement with the International Association for the
Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) to measure global citizenship
and sustainable development education, the persistent marginalization of
mother languages worldwide is threatening Goal 4 of the UN for Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).

The Agenda 2030 includes seven targets in Goal 4 that aims to “ensure
inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all”.

The seventh target – Goal 4.7 – obliges the international community to
ensure that in the next 15 years “all learners (would) acquire the
knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including,
among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable
lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace
and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity
and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development”.

UNESCO relates global citizenship to the empowerment of learners to assume
active roles to face and resolve global challenges and to become proactive
contributors to a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure world.

But the chances that Goal 4.7 would be achieved are rather bleak unless
adequate steps are taken urgently. The reason can be deduced from some
important data released by the UNESCO on the occasion of the International
Mother Language Day, celebrated annually on February 21.

According to a new paper by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report
(GEM Report), 40% of the global population – the combined population of
China, India and the United States – does not access education in a
language they understand.

Economic linguists – those that study the economics associated with
language policy – have noted that the immediate and long term economic
benefits of mother tongue education out-weigh the cost when compared to not
implementing mother tongue education policy.

UNESCO also points out that more than 50 per cent of about 7,000 languages
spoken in the world are likely to die out within a few generations, and
6,720 of these languages are spoken by a mere 4 per cent or 296 million,
slightly less than the population of Indonesia. “Only a few hundred
languages have genuinely been given a place in education systems and the
public domain, and less than a hundred are used in the digital world,” says
UNESCO.

The GEM Report titled ‘If you don’t understand, how can you learn?’ argues
that being taught in a language other than their own can negatively impact
children’s learning, especially for those living in poverty.

Marking the Mother Language Day last year, UNESCO Director-General Irina
Bokova underlined the basic principle of children learning in a language
they speak. “With a new global education agenda that prioritizes quality,
equity and lifelong learning for all, it is essential to encourage full
respect for the use of mother language in teaching and learning, and to
promote linguistic diversity. Inclusive language education policies will
not only lead to higher learning achievement, but contribute to tolerance,
social cohesion, and, ultimately, peace.”

The study finds that learning improves in countries that have invested in
bilingual programs. In Guatemala, students in bilingual schools have lower
repetition and dropout rates. They also have higher scores in all subject
areas. Children in Ethiopia who participated in bilingual programs for
eight years improved their learning in subjects across the curriculum, says
the document.

According to the paper, countries with colonial histories often find that
shifting to bilingual education is complicated, as can be seen in many
Latin American contexts that continue to use Portuguese, or Spanish, or in
many Francophone African countries, where French remains the predominant
language of instruction.

The GEM Report’s World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE) shows that
this trend seriously hampers students’ chances of learning.

In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, 55% of grade 5 students who speak the test
language at home learned the basics in reading in 2008, compared with only
25% of those who speak another language.

In Iran, 80% of grade 4 students who did not speak Farsi at home reached
the basics in reading, compared with over 95% of Farsi speakers.

In Honduras, in 2011, 94% of grade 6 students who spoke the language of
instruction at home learned the basics in reading compared to 62% of those
who did not.

In Turkey in 2012, around 50% of poor non-Turkish speaking 15 year olds
achieved minimum benchmarks in reading, against the national average of 80%.

In multi-ethnic societies, including Turkey, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh
and Guatemala, the paper shows that imposing a dominant language through a
school system – while sometimes a choice of necessity – has frequently been
a source of grievance linked to wider issues of social and cultural
inequality.

Aaron Benavot, Director of UNESCO’s GEM Report says language can serve as a
double-edged sword. “While it strengthens an ethnic group’s social ties and
sense of belonging, it can also become a basis for their marginalization.
Education policy must ensure that all learners, including minority language
speakers, access school in a language they know.”

The paper offers key recommendations to ensure that children are taught in
a language they understand:

   1. At least six years of mother tongue instruction is needed so that
   gains from teaching in mother tongue in the early years are sustained.


   1. Education policies should recognize the importance of mother tongue
   learning. A review of 40 countries’ education plans finds that only less
   than half of them recognize the importance of teaching children in their
   home language, particularly in early grades.


   1. Teachers need to be trained to teach in two languages and to
   understand the needs of second-language learners. Teachers are rarely
   prepared for the reality of bilingual classrooms, including with inclusive
   teaching materials and appropriate assessment strategies. In Senegal, only
   8%, and in Mali, only 2% of trained teachers expressed confidence about
   teaching in local languages.

UNESCO Director-General Bokova emphasized that “mother languages in a
multilingual approach are essential components of quality education, which
is itself the foundation for empowering women and men and their societies”.

With this in view, UNESCO’s Education 2030 Framework for Action, a road-map
to implement the 2030 Agenda, encourages full respect for the use of mother
language in teaching and learning, and the promotion and preservation of
linguistic diversity, noted Bokova.

“Multilingualism is essential to drive these objectives forward – it is
vital for success across the 2030 Agenda, regarding growth, employment and
health, as well as sustainable consumption and production, and climate
change,” she added.

Bokova assured that UNESCO brings the same focus to advancing linguistic
diversity on the Internet, through support to relevant local content as
well as media and information literacy.

Through the Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) programme, she
said, UNESCO is highlighting the importance of mother and local languages
as channels for safeguarding and sharing indigenous cultures and knowledge,
which are vast reservoirs of wisdom.

When it comes to the SDGs and the law, language considerations are
paramount. SDG 16, which calls for “peaceful and inclusive societies for
sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build
effective, accountable and inclusive institution at all levels,” implies
that an individual’s rights guaranteed under Article 2 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights must be incorporated into the SDGs regardless
of the language spoken by an individual. Yet the SDGs do not address
language services such as translators and interpreters necessary to ensure
that already disenfranchised speakers of minority or foreign languages are
not burdened with ensuring adequate and fair representation under the law.

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