Indigenous languages and what they mean for social development

The United Nations (UN) has declared 2022 to 2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. The Decade is now approaching its midpoint, with a formal review planned for 2027. For social work and social development, languages are more than a cultural concern. They carry knowledge about health, land, food, relationships and personhood, and they shape whether people can access education, services and justice on their own terms. This post sets out what the Decade is, where Africa stands within it, and what it asks of our professions, including what an Ubuntu lens adds.

This post is part of a series that share information on Indigenous people and issues. Below is a reminder of UN and AU obligations and mechanisms on Indigenous rights.

United Nations and African Union mechanisms on Indigenous rights

System	Mechanism	Established	Main functions	Legal basis
United Nations (UN)	Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)	2000, by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)	Advises ECOSOC and UN agencies, raises awareness and coordinates work on Indigenous issues across the UN system	UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP); ECOSOC resolution 2000/22
United Nations (UN)	Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP)	2007, by the Human Rights Council	Produces thematic studies and advice, and supports states to implement UNDRIP	UNDRIP; Human Rights Council resolutions 6/36 and 33/25
United Nations (UN)	Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples	2001, by the Commission on Human Rights	Conducts country visits, responds to allegations of violations and prepares thematic reports	UNDRIP and international human rights treaties
African Union (AU)	Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities and Minorities in Africa	2000, by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR)	Conducts research and country visits, contributes to state reporting, and advises the ACHPR on communications and advocacy with states	African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; ACHPR resolutions

What the International Decade of Indigenous Languages is

The UN General Assembly proclaimed the Decade through resolution 74/135 to draw attention to the critical situation of many Indigenous languages and to mobilise people and resources for their preservation, revitalisation and promotion. The Decade grew out of the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) leads its implementation together with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and other UN agencies. The resolution recognised that a single year was too short to put the necessary programmes in place, and it invited Indigenous Peoples, as custodians of their languages, to lead ideas for their preservation.

The scale of the problem is clear. UNESCO estimates there are 8,324 spoken or signed languages, of which around 7,000 are still in use, and warns that a language disappears roughly every two weeks.

The Global Action Plan

The Decade is guided by a Global Action Plan that provides a framework for UN entities, governments, Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, civil society, academia and the private sector. It sets out ten linked themes that extend the use of Indigenous languages across social, cultural, economic, environmental, legal and political life. These are:

• Quality and inclusive education in Indigenous languages
• Indigenous Peoples’ capacities to apply their languages and knowledge to ending hunger
• Digital empowerment and the right of expression in Indigenous languages
• A language framework for the health of Indigenous Peoples
• Public services in Indigenous languages
• Heritage and all forms of culture
• The contribution of Indigenous languages to protecting biodiversity
• Economic growth and decent work for Indigenous Peoples
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment through Indigenous languages
• Long term public and private partnerships for language preservation

Read as a whole, the list is a social development agenda. Hunger, health, public services, decent work and gender equality are core concerns of our field, and the Plan places language at the centre of each.

The 2027 mid term review

UNESCO has identified 2027 as the mid term of the Decade, an opportunity to review results and address challenges in implementing the Global Action Plan. The Global Task Force, which brings together Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, Member States and UN entities including UNESCO, UNDESA and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), proposes to use this point to take stock and plan the second half of the Decade. The UNESCO secretariat is currently collecting information on planned activities from partners, which gives organisations, universities and networks an opening to report and shape what comes next. The Global Task Force holds its 19th meeting on 23 November 2026.

Where Africa stands

Africa is one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world, and many of its languages are at risk. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights expressed concern in 2019 about the gradual disappearance of some Indigenous languages in Africa. It supported the proclamation of the Decade, urged States Parties to give Indigenous languages legal recognition and allocate budgets for them, and called on the African Union (AU) to promote Indigenous languages as part of its mandate.

Implementation has been uneven. The World Amazigh Congress has stated that governments in North Africa and the Sahara have largely ignored the Decade, and it has asked the Decade’s governing bodies and UNESCO to press those states to develop action plans for the Amazigh language.

There are also examples of what language centred work can look like. UNESCO brought together two of Africa’s remaining hunter gatherer communities to test the CyberTracker application, which allows users to record signs in nature in their own language, making orally transmitted knowledge visible.

Language and schooling

Education is where the effects of language policy are most direct. Around 40 per cent of the global population does not have access to education in a language they speak or understand, affecting more than a quarter of a billion learners. In some low and middle income countries the figure reaches 90 per cent. In many West African school systems, French remains the main language of instruction, so most children are taught from the early grades in a language they barely know.

UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report has recommended at least six years of mother tongue instruction so that early gains are sustained, and has found that fewer than half of 40 countries reviewed recognised the importance of teaching in home languages in their education plans. Children who learn in a language they do not understand fall behind, and the effect is strongest for children living in poverty. That makes language of instruction a social development issue as much as an educational one.

Ubuntu, language and personhood

Ubuntu, captured in the saying “a person is a person through family, community, society, environment and spirituality”, is itself a concept held in language. So are botho, Ukama, Harambee and Sankofa, the African concepts that increasingly inform social work and development thinking. Each carries a view of personhood, obligation and community that translates poorly into English or French. When the languages that hold these concepts weaken, the knowledge they contain becomes harder to teach, practise and pass on.

Languages also connect people to land. As Dr Lorna Williams, a member of the Global Task Force, puts it, “Our languages also help us to understand our lands.” Names of plants, soils, rivers, seasons and ancestral places hold ecological and spiritual knowledge that cannot be fully recovered once the words fall out of use. This is why the Global Action Plan links Indigenous languages to biodiversity and to ending hunger.

Language is also the medium of relationship. Respectful entry into a community, in the spirit of the San Code of Research Ethics instruction to come through the door, not the window, starts with speaking to people in their own language or working through those who do. A service, research project or development programme that operates only in a colonial language enters through the window, however good its intentions.

Implications for social development

Language as a dimension of poverty and exclusion

Language works as a barrier to services, schooling, courts, employment and political participation. People who do not speak the dominant language are often excluded from information about their rights, from health care they can understand, and from decision making. Social development policy should treat language access as part of measuring and addressing exclusion, alongside income, gender, disability and location.

Public services and health in Indigenous languages

Two of the Global Action Plan themes, public services and a language framework for health, call for services delivered in Indigenous languages. This links directly to the 2026 International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, which honoured Indigenous midwives. Midwives and healers carry knowledge of birth, illness and care in their own languages, and health systems that operate only in dominant languages lose that knowledge and lose the trust of the people who hold it.

Education and early childhood

Mother tongue based multilingual education from early childhood is one of the most effective development investments available. It improves learning, keeps children connected to families and elders, and gives Indigenous languages a place in public life. Social development practitioners can advocate for it, support community led early childhood programmes, and work with schools on the transition between home languages and national languages.

Livelihoods and decent work

The Global Action Plan links Indigenous languages to economic growth and decent work. Interpreters, teachers, broadcasters, writers, translators, cultural practitioners and digital content creators working in Indigenous languages represent livelihoods that also sustain the languages. Development programmes can recognise and fund this work rather than treating it as voluntary or cultural activity.

Women and intergenerational transmission

Languages are passed on largely through families, and women play a central role in that transmission. The Global Action Plan’s theme on gender equality reflects this. Support for mothers, grandmothers and women’s groups who teach and use Indigenous languages is both a language measure and a women’s empowerment measure.

Digital inclusion

Most digital platforms, search tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems operate in a small number of dominant languages. If Indigenous languages are absent from the digital world, young people will have fewer reasons and fewer spaces to use them. Communities should hold ownership and control of the language data that digital tools are built from, so that digitisation does not become another form of extraction.

Implications for social work practice

Social workers routinely assess, counsel, advocate and record in languages other than those spoken by the people they work with. Practice that respects Indigenous languages means offering assessment and intervention in a person’s home language wherever possible, working with trained interpreters rather than relying on children or untrained relatives, and recognising that some concepts about family, illness and wellbeing exist only in the person’s own language.

Social work education also has a role. Curricula can include African and other Indigenous concepts in their original languages, accept student work and assessments that draw on those languages, and support research published in them. Professional associations and journals can publish abstracts and key resources in African languages, which is a practical contribution the profession can make to the Decade.

Looking ahead

The mid term review in 2027 is an opportunity for social work and social development organisations to report what they are doing and to push for stronger action in the second half of the Decade. The African Commission’s call for legal recognition and budgets remains largely unmet in many countries. Languages carry the knowledge systems that our professions increasingly draw on, including Ubuntu itself, and keeping them in daily use in homes, schools, clinics, offices and online spaces is part of building development that fits the societies it serves.

Sources:

• Indigenous Languages Decade 2022 to 2032 (UNESCO)
• Global Action Plan (UNESCO)
• Mid term milestone (UNESCO)
• International Decade of Indigenous Languages (National Indigenous Australians Agency)
• Resolution on the promotion and protection of Indigenous languages in Africa, ACHPR/Res.430 (African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights)
• The CMA and AIPN representative co chairs the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (World Amazigh Congress)
• UNESCO warns 40% of learners still lack education in mother tongue (Education News Kenya)
• 40 per cent of global population lacks access to education in a language they understand (Kashmir Life)
• 40% of global population does not have access to education in language they understand (Vision IAS)
• If you don’t understand, how can you learn? (UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, via ReliefWeb)
• Ubuntu (Africa Social Work and Development Network)
• Come through the door, not the window: the San Code of Research Ethics (Africa Social Work and Development Network)