International Year 2008: Languages; Planet Earth; Potato; Sanitation

to Wednesday, 31 December 2008

The United Nations has proclaimed four special observances for 2008: International Year of Languages; International Year of Planet Earth; International Year of the Potato; and International Year of Sanitation.

International Year of Languages was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly to recognise that genuine multilingualism promotes unity in diversity and international understanding. Also that the United Nations pursues multilingualism as a means of promoting, protecting and preserving diversity of languages and cultures globally, and the importance of the equality of the Organization’s six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).

International Year of Planet Earth: Earth Sciences for Society aims to ensure greater and more effective use by society of the knowledge accumulated by earth scientists to make the Earth a safer, healthier and wealthier place for future generations.

International Year of the Potato aims to raise awareness of the importance of the potato as a food in developing nations - and of agriculture in general - in addressing issues of global concern, including hunger, poverty and threats to the environment. 

International Year of Sanitation aims to raise awareness and to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. At least 2.6 billion people – some 41 percent of the global population - do not have access to toilets or any sort of basic sanitation facilities. As a result millions suffer from a wide range of preventable illnesses, such as diarrhoea, which claim thousands of lives each day, primarily young children.