WSIS Forum 2022 Hackathon: ICTs for Indigenous Languages – Leaving no one behind, no one outside

People’s ability and freedom to use their chosen language is essential for human dignity, peaceful co-existance, reciprocal action, and for general wellbeing and sustainable development of society at large.

Languages, with their complex implications for communication, identity, cultural diversity, spirituality, communication, social and political integration, education and development, are of crucial importance for people and the planet. People not only embed in languages their history, traditions, memory, Indigenous knowledge, unique modes of thinking, meaning and expression, but they also construct their future through them.

Many languages are today in danger of falling into disuse. A majority of these are Indigenous languages. The gradual disappearance of languages, particularly Indigenous ones, is connected, in practice to the structural discrimination to which they have been subjected, to the vulnerable situation of their users (speakers and signers), whose actual use of their own languages in everyday life depends on the daily reality of their socio-cultural, economic, political, technological, environmental and demographic situations.

In the context of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032) proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on 18 December 2019 as an immediate follow up to the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages, it is important to ensure actions leading to the digital empowerment of Indigenous languages users, greater access to language technology and enhanced capacities of Indigenous people to create digital content, provide services and tools in their languages.

APPLY