Languages for Peace:  UNESCO’s Recommendations for Citizens of the World in the 21st Century

The link that exists between promoting languages and trying to keep the peace throughout the world has long been recognized by UNESCO, the educational and cultural branch of the United Nations.  Its Linguapax project, which views the learning of other languages and the preservation of languages in danger of becoming extinct[1] as powerful tools in the prevention of  aggression, violence and warfare, is now 20 years old.

What are UNESCO’s recommendations for citizens of the world in the twenty first century?  The director of its Language division is clear[2]:  every human being on the planet should  aim to be trilingual.  As far as the choice of these three languages is concerned there is no fixed recipe:  the selection can vary from country to country or even from region to region according to need. 

The first language naturally has to be one’s native tongue, the language which gives individuals their cultural identity, and which anchors them in an ethnic community. Historically, it is a known fact that, when a population is denied use of its native language through military oppression and conquest and forced to adopt the language of the conqueror,  malaise and resentment take over, eventually leading to latent or open resistance.  During imperial or colonial rule the culture and language of dominant countries was thus imposed over others in the name of greater or stronger civilizations and  the resulting loss of cultural identity, feelings of inferiority, worthlessness, and rebellion were the aftermath of imperialism and colonization.

But what about the second recommended language?  This should be what used to be referred to as a “foreign” language, a term for which UNESCO prefers to substitute the expression “neighbor” language, in other words, the language of a bordering country, a country with which traditionally a nation has gone to war.  Why so?  Because by learning the language and, with it, the culture of one’s “enemy” one learns to identify with another point of view, and to discover the priorities and the values of that nation, its different ways of doing things, an approach leading the way to a better  understanding  of  the other and the ability to avoid subjects of contention. Of course this neighboring country need not be a traditional enemy but rather a country with which one has much interaction thereby reinforcing  economic and cultural ties through linguistic exchanges for better understanding and appreciation.

 Finally the third language must be a world language, chosen from the dozen or so which are present on all continents and spoken by hundreds of millions of people as a first or second language.  These are the official languages of the U.N., the ones translated into at general meetings and used for documents of the organization, but also those  unofficial languages spoken by half a billion or a billion people in densely populated areas of the world.  Being able to speak a world language allows one to reach out to far regions of the planet, to travel  and communicate with other human beings on a vast scale. These are the tools of mass communication, invaluable in an age of global exchanges.

Some countries have already reached UNESCO’s goal. Many of their nationals are trilingual and positioning themselves as citizens of the twenty first century in a world now headed towards globalization. These countries in fact contend that the trilingualism of their nationals is what makes them competitive and wealthy.  It is interesting to note that such nations, in Europe, are small countries, with a tradition of openness, liberalism and political neutrality, proving the point that a link does exist between the promotion of languages, tolerance  and peacekeeping.

In contrast, monolingualism should be recognized as a definite handicap in our increasingly shrinking world.  Monolingual individuals  can only get away with being so if they are citizens of an economic and political superpower, one whose language is a world language.  But even then, in this outwardly privileged and dominant position,  monolingualism necessarily brings a loss:  the inability to comprehend other perspectives, understand other cultures, the  incapability to view the world other than through a single lens, and with it, more dangerously,  a tendency to rule out other points of views, other values, other ways  and traditions as unimportant at best, worthless and wrong at worst.

And so it seems, everyone must try and become a true citizen of the world, everyone must aim for multilingualism in order to keep the peace. Surveys tell us that half of the planet is already bilingual.  Let us raise the bar a notch higher and strive for trilingualism.

UNESCO’s call is a challenge to all educational programs throughout the world to make languages, all languages, whether major or minor, part of a global education.  We would be well advised to heed that call in order to preserve the linguistic heritage of the planet and  keep the peace. In the words of Dag Hammarskjöld, one of the most influential secretaries general of the United Nations as recorded in Markings, the posthumous book he left us before his untimely death, “A closed mind is a weakness, and he who approaches persons or painting or poetry without the youthful ambition to learn a new language and so gain access to someone else’s perspective on life, let him beware.[3]”