UN Marks International Native Language Day
February 21, 2006
Kurdish children in Iraq (RFE/RL)
To mark the occasion, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will hold a conference to focus on the world's linguistic diversity.
UNESCO notes more than 50 percent of the world's 6,000 languages are in danger of disappearing over the next few generations and thousands of languages are overlooked by the world's educational systems and the Internet.
International Mother Language Day was established by UNESCO in 1999 to promote the world's native languages, especially those of minorities.