UNESCO’s most important activity for safeguarding endangered languages is the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, with an interactive online resource now complementing its third print edition in press.
This is a part of UNESCO’s Endangered Languages Programme for mobilizing international cooperation to focus attention on this grave situation and to promote innovative solutions from communities, experts and authorities.
The online Atlas, freely available, aims to provide speaker communities, policy-makers and the general public with state-of-the-art knowledge, continually updated by a growing network of experts and community members.
UNESCO consider languages to be humankind’s principle tools for interacting and for expressing ideas, emotions, knowledge, memories and values. Languages are also primary vehicles of cultural expressions and intangible cultural heritage, essential to the identity of individuals and groups.
Safeguarding endangered languages is thus a crucial task in maintaining cultural diversity worldwide.
For more information:
http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00136
http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/
Stein Morten Lund, 8 January 2010
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