ERA at IPU
68 Countries of the world were present at the Conference of the Interparliamentary Union held on the 4th March at the Chamber of Deputies. Among the attendees, the radical Lapo Orlandi, Vice-secretary of ERA Onlus, association of linguistic democracy: after making mention of the representative of UNESCO Axel Plathe, Orlandi has confirmed the URGENCE to solve a real democratic question, that of the freedom and equity in the access to language, the first and fundamental human technology to communicate. For 10 years UNESCO – he said – has been warning us that using only one language (English) in global communication could mean to destroy 90% of mankind linguistic inheritance and to neglect the other languages. The Transnational Radical Party organized, on April 2004 at Geneva, during the workshop of the Commission for Human Rights of the United Nations, a briefing in order to propose a world-wide conference on languages and linguistic equity. It would be opportune that IPU dedicated to this issue a session in the next International Conference. Moreover Orlandi proposed a bill in order to introduce, between the possible foreign languages taught at school, Esperanto. The president of the Chamber Fausto Bertinotti admitted: “deputies have an outstanding role in protecting cultural identities and they must act to avoid the risk of linguistic homologation.