Human Rights Maps (179): Endangered Languages and Indigenous Peoples

People have a right

to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits (art. 27 of the Universal Declaration)

Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights says it like this:

All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

This right is meant to protect the cultural identity or way of life of different groups of people, usually indigenous people or other people who have a distinct culture, distinct cultural practices or their own language. Some of these groups have a legitimate fear that their identity and way of life are under threat, either

• by their own government (through policies that for example impose an official language and marginalize other languages)
• by an occuying government (such as the case of Tibet) or
• by national or global economic and social forces (e.g. deforestation, cultural hegemony etc.).

There are different ways of determining which groups are under threat, and none of them is straightforward. There’s disagreement about both the definition of a cultural group and the definition and meaning of cultural rights (more about that here). One attempt is the Peoples Under Threat index from Minority Rights Group International:

(source, where you can find an interactive version)

There’s also the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages:

(source, click image to enlarge)

It looks like there’s no substantial overlap between this index and the previous one. There’s also a Google project, appropriately called the Endangered Languages Project, which tries to catalog endangered languages before they are gone forever:

(source, where you can find an interactive version)

Experts estimate that only 50% of the languages that are alive today will be spoken by the year 2100.

More on cultural rights and indigenous people. More maps.