UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation

• (Français) Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'Édudation, la Science, et la Culture
• (Português) Organização das Nações Unidas para a Educação, a Ciência e a Cultura
• (العربي AR) - منظمة الأمم المتحدة للتربية والتعليم والثقافة
• (Kiswahili) Shirika la Elimu, Sayansi na Utamaduni la Umoja wa Mataifa

UNESCO played an active role in supporting InterAfrican discussion of African language policies (harmonisation of transcriptions, use in education, etc.) from the 1960s through the 1980s.

In recent years UNESCO has supported some initiatives such as International Mother Language Day and discussion of linguistic diversity on the internet.

There are several sectors in UNESCO which may deal in one way or another with languages:

• the Communications sector has dealt more directly with "multilingualism in cyberspace" and related issues. However there is apparently now an intersectorial group on language. [more info needed]
• UNESCO hosts InfoTerm (the International Information Centre for Terminology) http://www.infoterm.info/

UNESCO also is involved with some work relating to software:

• Together with the Free Software Foundation, it has sponsored a Free Software Directory project at http://directory.fsf.org/

Links

• Main site: http://www.unesco.org/
• "Basic documents on African language policy" page has reports and declarations from some UNESCO-sponsored meetings http://www.bisharat.net/Documents
• Wikipedia
  • AR http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%86%D8%B3%D9%83%D9%88
  • EN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO
  • FR http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO
  • PT http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO
  • SW http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO

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