The promotion of linguistic rights before and after 2011: UNESCO’s role in the Maghrib

ABSTRACT

Since its early years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has based its strategy on the promotion of multiculturalism. However, despite UNESCO’s declarations and recommendations on cultural diversity and multilingualism, some member states have adopted different and unreceptive national cultural policies. In fact, the principles and objectives of UNESCO were widely disregarded or produced partial and contradictory results. A case in point is the political and cultural context of North Africa. This paper analyses the changes to the linguistic rights policies of UNESCO and its North African member states following the 2011 revolutionary developments in the Maghrib.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft power
• UNESCO
• Maghrib
• Arabisation
• Arab revolutions
• cultural rights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

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Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was kindly supported by the fund ‘Ricerca di base 2015’, Department of Political Sciences, Università degli Studi di Perugia.