The Roya Institute panel was held at the 10th Asia Pro Bono Conference & Access to Justice Exchange (Sep. 23 – 26, 2021). The panel’s title was: “What Pro bono Lawyers Could/Should Do to Promote Linguistic Justice & Diversity; India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iran as Case Study.”
Roya Institute is among the well-known conference supporters, such as UNDP and ILO.
The panel welcomed the UNESCO initiative on naming the Upcoming Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022 – 2032) to focus on Indigenous language users’ human rights.
The critical question that all the presentations have been trying to answer is how to preserve linguistic diversity in our globalized world and prevent the death of endangered languages? What is the role of pro bono lawyering, Street Law programs, and similar activities in this regard?
The fact is that while many languages are considered stable, about 42% of them, around 3,018 languages, are endangered. Languages are stable when all the children in the community are still learning and using the language. If that situation changes, stable languages still have the possibility of declining until they are endangered. Institutional languages are least likely to become endangered – they have been adopted by governments, schools, mass media, and more. Many are being used as second languages.
Protecting endangered language and linguistic diversity is doubly important for human rights defenders, civil society, including pro bono lawyers in Asia, because More than 50% of the world’s endangered languages are located in just eight countries (India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Cameroon), including two densely populated Asian countries: India and Indonesia.
Asia has the most endangered indigenous languages, closely followed by Africa. Combined, they account for nearly 2/3 of the world’s languages. Myriad factors – terrain, cultural history, the spread of ancient civilizations – determine how many languages have originated within a certain area.
Presentations in the panel were divided into two parts:
In the first part, some basic and general discussions about the role of Pro bono activities in ensuring linguistic justice and protection of linguistic diversity are discussed. Such as how to use the street law program as well as the capacity of science, technology, focusing on artificial intelligence to protect endangered languages.
The second part was case studies on this issue in specific countries: Nigeria (by a member of the Roya Institute Advisory Board), Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, (Roya Institute global representatives in the mentioned countries) and Iran (by a law student of Tehran University).
Mahak Rathee, (Roya Institute global representative in India), was the panel moderator.