International Mother Language Day 2023; February 21st.

 FORUM: " Multilingual education - a necessity to transform education." International Mother Language Day 2023.

This year edition will explore the theme ‘multilingual education - a necessity to transform education.’ It will explore and debate the potential of multilingualism totransform education from a lifelong learning perspective and in different contexts. It is shaped around the following three inter-connected themes:

 • Enhancing multilingual education as a necessity to transform education in multilingual contexts from early childhood education and well beyond; 

• Supporting learning through multilingual education and multilingualism in our fast-changing global contexts and in crisis situations including emergencies contexts; 

• Revitalizing languages that are disappearing or are threatened with extinction. 

Objectives: The overall aim of the International Mother Language Day (IMLD) 2023 is to contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 by recognizing the role of actors in education and in related fields in promoting multilingualism and multilingual education, and in fostering quality, inclusive and equitable learning. 

More specifically, IMLD 2023 aims to:

 • Further sensitize actors in education, teachers, education policy-makers of the transformative power of multilingualism and multilingual education;

 • Support actors in education, teachers, education policy-makers in the strengthening of multilingualism and multilingual education by highlighting and sharing promising and innovative policies and practices.

Statement from Ms Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of International Mother Language Day 2023, February 21st.


While mother-tongue-based education is essential to the full development of individuals and to the transmission of linguistic heritage, 40% of the world's students do not have access to education in the language they speak or understand best. Such a situation severely undermines learning, cultural expression and the building of social relations, and significantly weakens the linguistic heritage of humanity. It is therefore crucial that this language issue be taken into account in the necessary exercise of transforming education, which UNESCO was supporting throughout 2022, culminating in the Transforming Education Summit, convened last September by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres. This imperative first requires a better collection of data, which will make it possible to carry out specific and customized actions. Above all, however, it requires a more general awareness of the irreplaceable but fragile value of the world's linguistic and cultural diversity. Each of the more than 7,000 languages spoken by humanity carries within it a unique view of the world, of things and of beings, a way of thinking and feeling – so much so that each disappearance of a language constitutes an irretrievable loss. In this context, the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032), for which UNESCO is the leading agency, is an important opportunity for the international community to mobilize in order to safeguard a major part of the world's cultural diversity. This is also the aim of this International Day: celebrating these ways of expressing the world in its multiplicity, committing to the preservation of the diversity of languages as a common heritage, and working for quality education – in mother tongues – for all.

Director-General of UNESCO.

EVENTS: The event will take place in Room (TBC), UNESCO House (Fontenoy). Interpretations will be available in English, French, Spanish. 

Morning session: Official opening and two panels on 

1) Multilingual education as a vector for transforming education and promoting gender equality and 

2) Revitalizing local languages to promotemultilingual education and transform education.

 Afternoon session: Two panels on

 1) Multilingual Education in Small Island Developing States: Challenges and Opportunities for Transformative Education and

 2) Multilingual education - a factor of change - in crisis and emergency situations. 

Target audiences 

• Key stakeholders in education, education policy-makers, teachers. 

• Non-governmental organizations, foundations and other bodies supporting multilingualism.