The international community has adopted a range of agreements which promote and protect languages. As part of this movement, UNESCO plays an essential role in advocating, supporting and monitoring policies and actions in favour of cultural diversity and multilingualism on the international level, and has developed a number of standard setting instruments to that end:

• Convention against Discrimination in Education, 1960
• Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and its Action Plan, 2001
• Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2003
• Recommendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Access to Cyberspace, 2003
• Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, 2005

UNESCO also endorses the principles underlying UN instruments addressing language issues, such as:

• United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966
• the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, 1992
• and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007