Statement of the Director-General of the UNESCO on the International Mother Language Day 2026; February 21st.

 Young people are the main guardians of the world’s linguistic diversity. They are the inheritors of nearly 7,000 spoken or signed languages – and of the responsibility to keep them alive and pass them on. Still, young people need to be introduced to linguistic diversity, and this begins at an early age, through education. This is why UNESCO’s theme for the celebration of this year’s International Mother Language Day, initiated by Bangladesh, is youth voices on multilingual education. The research on the subject is clear. As indicated in our recent report Languages Matter: Global Guidance on Multilingual Education, learning in one’s mother tongue promotes academic success, builds self-confidence and strengthens the predisposition to learning new languages. Yet 40% of the world’s children learn in a language which is not the one they speak at home. In light of this observation, UNESCO is pleased to be collaborating with Cameroon on the integration of more than 200 local languages into school and literacy programmes as international languages are also gradually being introduced. Likewise, within the framework of our collaboration with Mozambique, one in four schools now offers multilingual education, thanks to teacher training. Beyond its proven cognitive benefits, linguistic diversity is also a cultural and ecological matter, since each language carries with it a way of thinking, communicating and being in the world. Our Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity thus ensures the preservation of several types of oral expression on every continent: from the pasillo of Ecuador to the Mongolian Tuuli and to the Xeer Ciise in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. That is also why, as the lead agency for the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032), UNESCO provides more than 30 countries with support in this field: from the preservation of Mayan languages in Latin America to the preservation of the languages of the Hadzabe in the United Republic of Tanzania and the preservation of the languages of the Ju/’hoansi San in Namibia. Preserving linguistic diversity is ultimately also a digital issue. With most of online content produced in a dozen or so languages, linguistic exclusion becomes a form of digital exclusion. However, digital technology can also become a tool for transmission, and UNESCO is taking action in this area. For example, with Malaysia, it has helped young people to enrich Wiktionary by adding nearly 3,000 words from 25 endangered Indigenous languages. It has also launched the English–Kiswahili AI Dictionary in order to make artificial intelligence more accessible by providing clear definitions in Kiswahili of key terms related to AI. Finally, the UNESCO World Atlas of Languages enables greater knowledge of all endangered languages. On this International Mother Language Day, UNESCO is calling for investment in language transmission by placing young people at the heart of the solutions involved. Because linguistic diversity is a pillar of peace, dignity and inclusion. And no voice should be missing from the story of our human

 Mr Khaled El-Enany, Director-General of UNESCO,