Denial of right of peoples to use their own language

With land, language is considered by most dispossessed indigenous peoples as equally constitutive of their identity as sovereign peoples, and of their right to live as such. The diversity of human languages is in process of rapid erosion with many languages becoming extinct or in process of complete marginalization.

UNESCO estimated in 1996 that 4,000 to 5,000 of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world are those spoken by indigenous peoples.