Human Rights Day and Zamenhof Day posters in Indian languages

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Human Rights Day and Zamenhof Day posters in Indian languages

December 10, 2023 is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Five days later, December 15, is Zamenhof Day, which celebrates the birth anniversary of the founder of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof. This year, the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) has linked the two in a campaign, Digno, Libereco kaj Justeco por ĉiuj homoj kaj ĉiuj lingvoj ("Dignity, Freedom and Justice for all people and all languages").

As UEA notes in the English translation of its message (PDF), "Respect for human rights was specifically written into the UEA’s Constitution even before the formal establishment of the Declaration." Esperanto Por UN, an Esperanto-language support organisation for the United Nations, has also designed a poster as part of this campaign. Humphrey Tonkin, Renato Corsetti, and Rafael Lima have coordinated the campaign.

Esperantists (and friends of Esperanto!) in India collaborated to rapidly produce the poster in eight languages: Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. Earlier in 2023, we had blogged about a similar collaboration on colourful posters for the International Mother Language Day (IMLD).

A big Dankon! to friends in Hyderabad, Pune, and Shillong, and at Dialogo, the Esperanto-Klubo at Azim Premji University, for the translations! We hope the campaign will further underline UEA's message that, "Full human rights include linguistic human rights, which should form a basis for reciprocal respect and cooperation."

The message and the posters have been translated into several languages and are archived here. And here are the Esperanto original, and the translations by the Indian group: