Language inclusion is key to helping women and girls shape a better future for themselves. This International Women’s Day, CLEAR Global looks at how we can listen, inspire opportunities, and promote women’s rights with inclusion. It all starts with language. 

Investing in women is a human rights issue. Exclusion from vital information and services is detrimental to women’s health, well-being, and opportunities. Time and again, women, children, older people, minorities, and people with disabilities are disproportionately affected by vulnerability and language exclusion. Read on to see how the evidence stacks up. Learn how language awareness can support everyone’s right to health, promote gender equality, and help reach those most in need around the world. 

International Mother Language Day has its origins in Bangladesh, where years ago the Bengali (or Bangla) Language Movement called to recognize and respect the community’s linguistic and cultural rights. Today the mother language initiative has evolved into UNESCO’s global celebration of ‘cultural and linguistic diversity for sustainable societies.’

In Bangladesh now, over 900,000 Rohingya people find refuge in Cox’s Bazar’s camps. Having fled Myanmar, they face a multitude of challenges to their health, wellbeing, and education. Massive humanitarian efforts aim to protect the Rohingya community’s human rights and provide aid with respect and dignity. But detrimentally, our evidence shows that the Rohingya language has long been overlooked.

This blog explains why speaking someone’s mother language does more than make you feel at home. Including mother languages lets us unlock the full potential of sustainable humanitarian and development projects globally. Four billion people speak a marginalized language, and their voices deserve to be heard.

Each person’s language represents their unique culture and identity. Language technology enables us to get and share vital information from one side of the globe to the other. Yet the growing digital language divide leaves out half the world’s population. 

Four billion people speak a language that is under-represented in the digital space. Although there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, just 5% are online. And while AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT have surged, they work best in English, French, and other languages that are common on the internet (with large existing datasets). Vital language data doesn’t exist for languages that the world’s most marginalized communities speak, and too many people are ever-more excluded from critical conversations. If we want to make inclusive, sustainable progress, it’s time we start to listen. 

Through funding from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, represented by the GIZ “FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence for All” project, we had the opportunity to build the foundations of the Four Billion Conversations movement (4BC). The goal was to spark multilingual conversations that give people the tools they need to enable fairer access to information and ensure everyone can be heard. 

Building the Four Billion Conversations (4BC) movement: leveraging language technology to address exclusion

The Four Billion Conversations (4BC) movement unlocks the power of language technology to address exclusion. By promoting inclusivity for marginalized communities, we can create sustainable change globally. With impactful AI solutions that scale, we can enable more people to participate in conversations that affect them. In social development and humanitarian contexts, where people are excluded from access to crucial information, services and decision-making, multilingual tools and resources can support their needs. It all starts with understanding what local communities and individual service users want, and how we can multiply our impact to reach more people in their language. CLEAR Global’s language AI solutions so far include chatbots, machine translation, and automatic speech recognition technology solutions, particularly for low-resource languages.

Increasing awareness and reach of language AI 

With this GIZ-funded project, CLEAR Global focused on building partner networks, and advancing and raising awareness of language AI in regions where people may have limited connectivity or low literacy. We explored multilingual channels like TILES (Touch Interface for Language Enabled Services), that work for people with limited connectivity or low literacy. We researched and developed resources that can support local communities with critical climate change resilience and sexual and reproductive health information needs. Our overall objectives were clear: 

1. Make language AI and information about it accessible to non-specialists, so those without a technical background can use language tech easily.

2. Develop a playbook: a guide for social impact partners to integrate language AI into their programs. 

3. Build dialogue: engage with program and tech partners across East Africa, West Africa, and South Asia, on technology for social good.

4. Mobilize communities with our translation platform: extend the TWB Platform’s capability for language data collection, validation and engagement with our global community language volunteers.

5. Identify use cases: explore potential applications of language AI in climate change resilience for farmers and sexual and reproductive health.

Good health care and well-being are rights for all, but information and services are not currently accessible to all language speakers. 

CLEAR stands for community, language, engagement, accountability, and reach. With the TWB Community of over 100,000 language volunteers, CLEAR Tech’s AI-driven language solutions, and CLEAR Insights’ research and partnerships, we’re set to change the way the world communicates. We’re making critical health care information more accessible. Join our call to speak up for language inclusion in 2024 – and read on to learn why it matters.

Language exclusion affects people’s lives, well-being, and development because it reinforces existing social, political, and economic inequalities. Four billion people who speak a non-colonial language are dangerously underrepresented, locked out of vital conversations that affect their health. In real terms, this puts people at risk. Like when they can’t access potentially life-saving information about their health care or well-being. 

The stark truth is that those most disadvantaged or excluded by language include people at risk of poverty, women and girls, people with disabilities, older adults, and minorities. Globally, four and a half billion people were not fully covered by essential health services in 2021, and 25 million children missed out on important immunizations. With inclusive solutions, we can ensure we leave no one behind – whatever language they speak.