Kurdish Institutions in Europe Issue Statement on International Mother Language Day

ARK News.. On the occasion of International Mother Language Day, observed annually on February 21, Kurdish institutions in Switzerland, Brussels, and Stockholm issued a joint statement emphasizing that education in one’s mother tongue is a fundamental and essential right.

In their statement, the institutions noted that UNESCO declared February 21 as International Mother Language Day in 1999, choosing the date to honor university students who lost their lives during the Bengali Language Movement in Bangladesh. The day is marked annually in UNESCO member states to promote and protect linguistic diversity.

The statement read: “On the occasion of International Mother Language Day, as designated by UNESCO, we commemorate and celebrate the mother tongue of our people.”

The institutions highlighted that language is the most important tool of communication in life and that every nation preserves its dignity and existence through its language. The loss of a language, they stressed, leads to the loss of a nation’s values, history, culture, art, and identity.

They added that International Mother Language Day serves as a reminder that protecting the Kurdish language is a shared responsibility, and that there is a duty to pass this sacred value on to future generations.

The statement also underlined that the Kurdish people possess an ancient language rooted in their land for thousands of years, describing Kurdish as one of the oldest and most authentic languages in the world. It noted that the Kurdish language consists of four main dialects: Kurmanji, Sorani, Zazaki, and Hawrami, each of which is considered by many to be a distinct linguistic form.

The institutions further drew attention to assimilation policies in northern Kurdistan, stating that the use of the Kurdish language has declined in many areas and faces risks of erasure and systematic distortion.

They concluded by reaffirming that protecting the language means protecting national existence, stressing that education in the mother tongue is essential:

“For the protection and development of language, education in that language is a fundamental condition; a nation that learns in its mother tongue preserves its language, values, and dignity, for language is the memory of history, values, and the honor of the nation.”

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