The theme this year for United Nations International Mother Language day is “Mother tongue instruction and inclusive education”. It highlights the importance of mother tongue as part of the right to education and encourages its member states to promote instruction and education in the mother tongue.
International Mother Language Day has been observed every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. The date represents the day in 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bangla, as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan, were shot and killed by police in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh.
In 2012, young voices calling for social justice and the opportunity for a decent job continue to grow in number. Young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults; worldwide over 75 million youth are looking for work.
The United Nations human rights chief today appealed to Member States to act now to protect the Syrian people as the Government’s violent crackdown on peaceful protests continues unabated and the number of dead and injured continues to rise.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was a welcome guest aboard the ship "
The United Nations 
Geneva, Switzerland - On the 9th International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (IAC) and the Geneva Human Rights Office, call for the adoption of more human-rights based legislation to end FGM.
"It’s not enough to keep talking on the basis of fixed positions; the solution must reflect a political will and concrete steps to move."
