Item 7 on the agenda this afternoon is a statement by the Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language on the UN International Year of Indigenous Languages. I call on the Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language, Eluned Morgan.

Thank you very much. In 2016, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2019 as the International Year for Indigenous Languages. We are all familiar with the UN’s practice of bringing important matters to global attention. I am therefore grateful for the opportunity to inform the Assembly of how the Welsh Government is marking the year in question.

There are three objectives by the UN for the year. The first is to focus global attention on the challenges confronting indigenous languages and to underline their significance for sustainable development, reconciliation, developing good governance and peace building. The second is to target definitive steps that will improve the situation of those languages. And the third is to increase the capacity of organisations that promote indigenous languages and provide help to protect the rights of the people who speak those languages. UNESCO has taken the lead in co-ordinating the year on behalf of the United Nations.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

It's worth remembering that Welsh is in a stronger position than many languages globally. It's a great concern that so many languages in the world are facing real challenges. Experts estimate that one language dies in the world every other week, and at that rate it is estimated that about half of the 7,000 or so languages in the world today are likely to disappear during the next 100 years. In reflecting on those statistics, it's worth remembering that languages belong to people and communities, and that they're much more than just a means of communication—they are part of the world’s cultural wealth and diversity.

This year provides us with an opportunity, as a nation that has seen a resurgence in efforts to increase the numbers of Welsh speakers, to show others our efforts and to tell our story about how we have implemented language planning in Wales. The year gives us an opportunity also to share our expertise and experience. It also provides us with an opportunity to learn from the experience of other countries and to create new international connections.

But, ultimately, I am keen to show the world that our vision for the Welsh language is both inclusive and broad. That is, we don't just want to protect the Welsh language and culture—we want to increase the use of Welsh, provide a space for its culture to evolve and welcome new people to the language.

Therefore, our objective as a Government through our participation in the year is to provide a platform for us, as a nation, to, first, raise Wales’s international profile as a bilingual nation, and raise Wales’s profile, post Brexit, amongst global international institutions and networks; secondly, to celebrate the history and culture of the Welsh language internationally; and, thirdly, to consolidate Wales as a leading nation for language planning, and to learn, also, from others.

In doing all of this, my intention is to contribute to delivering a key aspect of the Cymraeg 2050 strategy, which is to create favourable conditions for us to reach a million Welsh speakers and to increase the use of Welsh. One of the important elements of creating favourable conditions is to raise awareness and to foster pride in Wales regarding the Welsh language’s place in the world amongst the family of languages. As stated in 'Cymraeg 2050', we want to

'ensure that the Welsh language is an integral part of our efforts to enhance Wales’ relationship with the wider world, and used to welcome and integrate people who move to Wales.'

As the Minister responsible for international relations and the Welsh language, I see a great opportunity to bring both aspects of my portfolio together. I am certain that the Welsh language can benefit from an increased profile internationally, and I also think that Wales can benefit from the fact that we are a bilingual nation, as I mentioned at the World Bank in Washington recently.

It's evident to me that our living bilingualism is a unique selling point for us. Whilst other minority languages exist alongside English in the UK and in Ireland—and we work closely with those Governments through the British-Irish Council—it's obvious that the situation of the Welsh language is different.

So, the key question is, then: how can we take advantage of that unique selling point—the USP? Are there economic opportunities that stem from the fact that we have a bilingual workforce here? Is it possible for us to develop a market as a test bed to develop bilingual and multilingual software, given that the Welsh language co-exists alongside English? That's the basis of our Welsh language technology action plan.

Another aspect of my ambition is to use the year as a way of developing Wales as a minority language champion, by sharing our experience and good practice with other countries. We will do more to celebrate the work that is undertaken in Wales to promote the Welsh language. We are already a member of various international language planning networks, such as the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity—the NPLD—and the British-Irish Council. But I'm keen to build on that. When I was in the United States, the Welsh Government arranged a seminar in the United Nations with representatives from Quebec, the Basque Country and Flanders. They had a genuine interest in learning from what's happening in Wales, and I am sure there is more that we can continue to learn from the experiences of other countries as well.

I do believe that we have a good story to tell about how we've already developed as a country, through immersion education, nursery education, language planning at a community level, the status of the Welsh language, and the promotional work that's happening with businesses, and so forth. And, of course, we have talented artists in Wales who perform in Welsh. Our artists now have increased opportunities to perform in Welsh across the world. That was the theme of the Mamiaith symposium held in Bethesda in April by our partners in the international year, UNESCO. I would also like to thank our national poet, Ifor ap Glyn, for his poem ‘Lleisio (Voicing)', which he wrote to mark the year.

Earlier this year, Welsh Language Music Day celebrated by streaming a gig that was held here in the Senedd—and I thank the Llywydd for allowing that—live across the world. Also, last Friday in London, the young people of Wales showed that they can use the Welsh language to voice a contemporary message about tackling knife crime, namely this year’s Urdd peace and goodwill message.

Further activities are planned to mark the year over coming months, including the first international partnership of the National Eisteddfod with Ireland and the Fidget Feet company, and an event to close and reflect upon the year.

I am keen to ensuring that this year is a starting point to strengthen the Welsh language’s footprint internationally and to contribute our expertise, our experience and our vision to help the situation of languages across the world.

Thank you, Minister, for that statement. Could I just ask first of all—? 

You said in your statement, if I understand this correctly, that UNESCO is the lead organisation for co-ordinating the year on behalf of the UN. 

Is that correct? 

Well, having had a quick look at their website before coming here, I realised that they are organising five events in Wales. I'm not clear if that's in partnership with the Welsh Government, but I wonder if I can just implore you at the beginning here to contact whoever is responsible for their website to explain that these five places that they've put on their map of Wales, four of them aren't in Cardiff as they're supposed to be and, apparently, the Isle of Man is just off Holyhead. So, I think maybe the UN needs a little bit of guidance and help there.

But the reason I raise that is because one of the questions that we should be asking is whether the UN is giving any money either to Welsh Government or to any other organisation directly to help with this, because the three objectives that you outlined in your statement are pretty important ones, not least the third of them, which was to increase the capacity of all stakeholders that support and promote indigenous languages and protect the rights of people who use those languages. And so, there are some obvious questions for me about whether they are helping you financially to, I don't know, support mentrau iaith, the Canolfan Dysgu Cymraeg Genedlaethol, the Welsh Language Commissioner's office, perhaps, or, particularly important for me, the Iaith Gwaith project. Because I appreciate that some money has gone towards these organisations up until now, but I think they could always do with more if they're going to fulfil not just the Welsh Government's strategic aims, but also those of the UN.

I'm quite interested in what you had to say about Wales being a nation that others could look to in terms of language planning. I think we can be candid here and say it's not always been that much of a success. I'm thinking of those early generations, post devolution, who put up with half a GCSE for Welsh language. You know, we've been through a slightly torrid time on deciding whether we should retain the Welsh Language Commissioner, for example. The early versions of Welsh in education statutory plans—you know, there were some question marks about those, not least because, of course, there was no statutory underpinning for anything in those WESPs to actually be delivered. But things have moved on. Perhaps we have learnt from other countries ourselves, as you indicated we were. In fact, it's the Welsh Language Commissioner I'm thinking of here: it's not so long ago that Cardiff hosted a meeting of language commissioners from around the world and I think that actually reinforced—I don't know how other Members feel about it—but reinforced how important a role that is here in Wales. 

I think you also mentioned you wanted to use this as an opportunity to reinforce a message I think we are actually putting out there at the moment, which is that Wales is a space for culture to evolve and new people to be introduced to the language. And we are looking at the new Welsh curriculum—I can see all the ambition that's in there for Welsh language and Welsh language continuum, but, of course ,we're at a very early stage in seeing what that's going to look like in real life. But I'm wondering if you can give us, in your response to these questions, a little bit of information about how maybe we're reaching out to the black, Asian, minority ethnic community—I'm sorry to homogenise them in that way. But, of course, all the young people in communities around Wales have had Welsh in their curricula for a very long time, but I think it's fairly obvious that the chances for young people in some parts of Swansea, for example—they may not have the chance to practice their Welsh. Of course, in some of these households, they're already speaking two languages. They're in advance, really, in speaking a third, so perhaps you can tell us a little bit about what work's being done on that. 

I also notice from the UNESCO site that, in Britain, considered to be appropriate work for this year of indigenous languages is that, in Manchester, there's an event that's discussing Latin-American Spanish; in Leeds, there are events to do with the sub-continent of India and their languages; and in Edinburgh, bizarrely, they've got an event supporting French, which I didn't think was indigenous to Scotland, but there you go. My question, I suppose, is: are we looking beyond Welsh when we're thinking of taking opportunities out of this particular year? And I'm thinking of British Sign Language in particular, because I would say there's an argument that that is an indigenous language for Wales and it has been raised on the floor of this Chamber a number of times.  

Just very quickly, then, I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the basis of the Welsh language technology action plan and how you think that might be embedded into schemes like Technocamps and Science for Schools, which are obviously schemes that encourage the take-up of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which is going to be pretty important for our economy generally?

But also, on my final point, which is a point on which I completely agree with you, and that is the use of our identity as a bilingual nation to be used to advantage economically as well as culturally in a global context. The fact that Wales is the only part of the UK that can say, 'You are free to operate here in a medium other than English' I think is a massive sell. But what I would encourage you to do is consider how we might make that an offer that is a trilingual Wales and to work with the education Minister on space for modern foreign languages within the new curriculum. Because, at the moment, as you know, it's not got a very high priority. I'm very nervous that the capacity for teaching modern foreign languages is disappearing, and even though I'm sure we'd all have ambitions for that in the national curriculum, we need to make sure we've got people who can deliver it. That is not to say that Welsh and modern foreign languages are the same or should have the same priority, but if that is going to be our sell to Wales, we'd better do a really good job of it. Thank you. 

Thank you for those questions—a variety of questions, a great many questions—and thank you for all the research that you’ve done on this issue. Unfortunately, UNESCO hasn’t given us any funding; indeed, we have to contribute to the pot in order to be part of this. And what’s happened is that Wales Arts International has given £50,000 for us to be able to do some of the actions and the projects that we hope to carry out during the year. So, there are some projects; I've mentioned the one in Bethesda already, and we hope to focus on another one before the end of the year. So, there are things happening, but, of course, there's always a shortage of funding. But I do see this as an opportunity to launch and ensure that people around the world know about this.

You've also mentioned whether we are in a good position or not as a country, and how confident we are and where we are linguistically. Well, recently, I listened to a man singing in Bethesda—only 100 people in the world speak his language, and, when you consider how fragile some of these other languages are, I do think that we do have something to offer. So, I think that this is an opportunity for us to give something back to the world, and that's what's important to me—that we can offer something to the world and that we have had a resurgence and that we are very keen to see this move towards 1 million Welsh speakers. But that isn't something that many other places believe is possible. The fact that we are taking action to deliver on that—well, I hope that that's something we can share with the world.

In terms of welcoming people to Wales, I do think it's important that we want to see Welsh being inclusive and that people can be involved with the language. We have immersion centres for people who come into the country to ensure that they can be involved with learning the language, and we have had projects to target some areas, especially where there are people from the BAME community, and there's a new school in the bay, of course, and in Newport; there is a lot of work that's being done in those two areas in particular.

We haven't considered doing sign language during this year, but what is important, I think, in terms of the technology action plan, is that people do understand that they have an opportunity to help us with the development of Welsh language technology, and it is important that people take advantage of the fact that they can have their voice heard, because we have to build a portfolio of people speaking so that we can use technology where you speak into a machine and people understand what you're saying and they can reply to you. And that's more complex where there is a minority language.

And the fact that we are a bilingual nation is unique, and I'm also concerned about modern languages in the curriculum, but I know that Kirsty is considering that, and that global responsibility is a central part of this new scheme.

Thank you for your statement. Now, as per usual, I have to ask how much substance there is to the words contained within this statement. May I remind you of some recent events that this Government has been involved with in terms of the Welsh language? An intervention by a Deputy Minister in an employment process by the National Library, where he tried to ensure that the job wouldn't go to a Welsh speaker; an absurd comment by you, the Minister for the Welsh language, and I quote, that Cartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd would be at risk of discrimination if they placed the Welsh language as an essential skill for its posts. That intervention and comments are insulting to the Welsh language and go contrary to your very own strategy in terms of the Welsh language in the workplace, comments that make me listen to this statement with a very healthy pinch of salt. You've talked this afternoon about the importance of immersion centres, but you're cutting the grant that maintains those centres, so that pinch of salt is getting even bigger.

Now, I note that there are three objectives for the International Year of Indigenous Languages, and the last of these is to assist in protecting the rights of speakers of those languages. We're very fortunate in Wales. We are a small stateless nation, but we have legislation in place to do just that, to safeguard our rights—unlike the situation, unfortunately, with minority languages in many other countries across the world. In 2011, a significant and important piece of legislation was passed under the leadership of Plaid Cymru and the former Member for Arfon, Alun Ffred Jones, and that legislation does give equal official status for the Welsh language in the public sector in Wales, but the Government has been very slow in implementing that legislation, and, unfortunately, there is a great deal of work still to be done in terms of the implementation of standards. And there is no explanation in terms of the delay with standards on water companies, post companies, housing associations, buses, trains, electricity, gas and telecommunications.

So, I would like to ask today, once again, and in light of objective 3 of this international year on rights: what is the timetable for making progress with all of the standards that need to be put in place? It’s eight years since this innovative legislation was passed, and, in the shadow of Brexit and the growth of the far right, we, more than ever, need to safeguard linguistic rights for people in Wales.

But, despite the need to ensure the rights of individual Welsh people to live through the medium of Welsh, we need to go much further. The Government needs to fully recognise that the Welsh language is a community language, is the language of day-to-day communication in many areas of Wales, particularly in the west of Wales, or the Arfor area, which is Anglesey, Ceredigion, Carmarthen and some neighbouring areas. Many of the residents of the areas live naturally through the medium of Welsh. And I sometimes think that there is a lack of understanding of this issue. This isn’t an artificial construct. That’s not what the Welsh language is in my life in Arfon; it’s a natural part of my family, social and community life, and we need to emphasise that community aspect as well as the emphasis on individual rights.

The Arfor area is among the poorest in Europe, and young people have to leave the area to find work, weakening the Welsh language and the linguistic social fabric. I would like to know what your policies are in terms of developing not only the Welsh language, but the economy, public services, housing and planning policy, transport and so on and so forth. What are your Government’s plans for a specific regional strategy for this area? Because the saying goes, ‘heb iaith, heb waith’—'without work, there’s no language'. So, what exactly are your plans in light of all of this?

And, if we are serious about sustaining the Welsh language as a community language in our Welsh speaking areas, then we need to ensure that there are quality jobs available in the west of Wales so that young people can remain in their communities if they choose to do so, and we could start by looking at the Government’s own jobs. So, my final question is: what plans does the Government have to relocate posts or to locate any new posts that are directly under the control of your Government—what plans are in place to locate these jobs in the Arfor area? Arfor, not Arfon.

Yes, I was going to say: Arfon or Arfor?

Arfor.

Arfor, okay. Well, thank you very much. It’s very sad, I think there’s an opportunity here for us to take pride and for us to tell our story to the world, and what’s sad is that you have discussed here the problems that we have, and this is the opportunity that we have. There are so many things that we should be proud of, I think, and it’s very sad that, once again, what’s happened is a focus on the negatives.

We have to give something back to the world. I think that’s vital. The rights in this country have expanded astonishingly over the years, and that’s something that we can show the world in terms of what has changed. The standards that we’ve introduced have made a big difference. We have had recent discussions with the regulatory forums, for example, in the health department, to see what we can do now, and that process is moving forward. I do think as well that there is awareness that the Welsh language is a living language in those particular areas in the west, but we have to go further than just safeguarding Welsh in those communities. Our vision is to expand the language and have a million Welsh speakers. You can't do that by just operating in Arfor or Arfon. What's important is that we expand the possibilities and ensure that we have more learners across our country.

And our hope now—and you are right, it's important that we do focus on the economy. Brexit is not going to help in the Welsh-speaking strongholds. That's not going to help at all, and that's one of the reasons why we will be holding a symposium on the economy, looking at the Welsh language, in the autumn in the west.

And I do also think that it's important to emphasise that a lot of posts have already moved from Cardiff. Llandudno—there are many Welsh speakers in our departments in Llandudno, and many of them have moved out to Aberystwyth already. And I do think that we, as a Government, are trying to ensure that we are trying to spread the work of regulating Wales across the country.

Thank you for your statement, Minister. The International Year of Indigenous Languages gives us the opportunity to not only celebrate the fact that over 5,000 indigenous languages are spoken around the world, but to work together to save those languages from extinction. A good friend of mine, Mohammed Sarul Islam, has worked tirelessly over the last decade or so to secure an international mother language monument here in Cardiff. The fact that the monument was finished during the International Year of Indigenous Languages is a fitting testament to the hard work of Sarul and other members of the committee. Cardiff is a multilingual city and a fitting home to a monument celebrating the world's languages. But, as the Minister quite rightly highlights, many of those languages are under threat. According to the endangered languages project, there are 3,423 languages facing extinction, and Welsh is on the endangered list.

Minister, what discussions has your Government had with the Indigenous Language Institute about how to share best practice and work together to safeguard all endangered languages? The internet poses a threat to indigenous languages, but technology also holds the key to protecting languages for future generations. Minister, many open-source projects exist to ensure that, from operating system to e-mail client, your language of choice is supported. What is the Welsh Government doing to ensure the public sector makes greater use of such software? Open source is also leading the way in ensuring digital assistants support indigenous languages. Minister, what discussions have you had with the Mozilla Foundation about project Common Voice and how your Government can contribute to the growth of the Welsh language in the digital sphere?

And, finally, Minister, one of the greatest threats to indigenous languages is the loss of land for indigenous people. Climate change and rising sea levels threaten indigenous peoples everywhere. In the coming decades, climate migration could lead to the loss of many languages. Minister, what is your Government doing to ensure that our impact on the global climate does not threaten indigenous peoples around the globe? Thank you.

Well, thank you very much. I think some of the words that were said there were very welcome: the fact that there is a sensitivity towards indigenous languages, that there is an understanding of the fact that climate change is going to impact on places in the world and there will be pressures and that, actually, that is likely to lead to further movement. The problem is that many, many of the members of the party that she now belongs to actually are in denial of these things and have actually been in a situation to really stir up and stoke tensions, particularly against people who speak minority languages. And it's really sad, because I know the Member herself is not in that category, but there are many, many people in that party who hold that position, and it's really sad to see that situation. I think there has to be an understanding that, as a party—as a party—that is not the view that is shared by many, many people who are now following the lead that we are seeing from Nigel Farage.

In relation to the Welsh technology plan, I'm very pleased that you talk about open-source technology. It's a really important aspect that we are really trying to develop. We are working very closely with Mozilla, the organisation, in the development of this Common Voice project. So, if anybody is a Welsh speaker, then we would ask you to add five sentences of your voice to the complex network that we're trying to build up so that we have a base of speakers to use to make sure that we can use this voice technology in future.

I thank the Minister.