The Organisation for Multilinguism leads a campaign for the recognition of Guaraní as an official lenguage of Mercosur together with Spanish and Portuguese. Until now, it has only been recognised as “one of the historical languages of the region” despite the fact that it is an official language of Paraguay since 1992, where it is spoken by the majority of the population. Guaraní is also spoken in Bolivia, Argentina and Brasil with a total of 22 million speakers, although it is not a matter of numbers.

Examples like the ones of Switzerland, Belgium or recently the adoption by the European Union of Gaelic as official and working language - a language spoken by less than a million persons and official language with English of Ireland - show the importance of multilinguism for the recognition and the respect of individuals and peoples. This reality has long been recognized by UNESCO in order to protect cultural diversity.

The objective of the Organization for multilinguism in Spain is to strive for a total political and institutional recognition of the linguistic plurality of the State. It has launched several initiatives such as the campaign “Plural documents” to include all national languages other than spanish- catalan/valencien, gallego and euskera – in all personal identification documents (passport, National Identity Card, driving license, residency card, etc.). It will know share its experience with Paraguay for this campaign.

For “Guarani, official lengiage of Mercosur” to have the largest possible audience, the organization has asked Iwith Foundation to prepare an internet platform for action. This campaign illustrates the dynamism and commitment of the Catalan organizations to express solidarity with other parts of the world. Llegir-la en català...

Image: www.om-plural.org: