Human Rights and Indigenous Languages

Human Rights and Indigenous Languages in China, India, and Indonesia: Prospects for the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages in the world’s most linguistically diverse continent

China, India, and Indonesia are the three most populous and linguistically diverse countries in Asia, which is the world’s most linguistically diverse continent. This seminar will examine the prospects for successfully implementing the United Nations’ International Decade for Indigenous Languages in these countries. First of all, it will describe how the UN plans to implement an Indigenous-led program for the Decade based on a human rights approach. Following this, it will describe how attacks on human rights defenders and restrictions on civil society have increased in China, India, and Indonesia in recent years. These trends will be discussed in relation to the contested politics of indigeneity in these countries. Overall, this seminar will argue that the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages is unlikely to meet with much success in China, India, and Indonesia. Instead, a climate of fear that stifles language activism and prevents new initiatives from emerging is likely to prevail. 

About the speaker

Gerald Roche is a senior lecturer in politics at La Trobe University. His work focuses on the politics of languages in Asia, particularly Tibet and the Himalayas, and his publications have appeared in Annual Review of Anthropology, Patterns of Prejudice, State Crime Journal, American Anthropologist, and other journals. He also coedited the Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization, and more recently, the book Bordering Tibetan Languages: Making and Marking Languages in Transnational High Asia, published by Amsterdam University Press.