Project 7170: every person deserves knowledge in their own language

Somewhere right now a child is sitting in a classroom where the textbook is written in a language she does not speak at home. She is not slow. She is not lazy. She is just being taught in the wrong language, and somehow the system has decided that is her fault.

There are a lot of children like her. UNESCO puts the number at around 2.3 billion people who cannot learn in their own language, and roughly 40% of humanity who have no real access to education in a tongue they actually understand. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, that figure climbs past 90%.

Then there is the internet, where most of the world's knowledge actually lives now. Ethnologue lists 7,170 living languages. Online, a handful of them carry almost everything worth reading. English alone is the content language of about half of all websites, according to W3Techs. A child in Lagos, Dhaka or Yerevan can hold the entire library of humanity in her pocket and still find none of it in her own language. Textbooks failed her first. The internet is failing her now.

We think that is wrong, and more importantly we think it is fixable. It was not fixable ten years ago. Today it is.

So we are asking UNESCO and the United Nations for three things.

First, recognise that free access to verified knowledge in a person's mother tongue is a fundamental human right, not a luxury for countries that can afford it.

Second, launch a global open-knowledge program with a single measurable target: quality educational and scientific content, including public digital libraries and open courseware, available in all 7,170 living languages by 2035, with clear milestones published every year. Public digital knowledge infrastructure must be multilingual by default, not translated as an afterthought.

Third, make open licensing and multilingual access a binding condition for any research or education paid for with public money. Taxpayers should not have to pay twice, and they should not have to read the result in a foreign language.

We call this plan Project 7170: every language counted and covered by 2035.

Some people will say this is a dream. That is fine. We are not asking them to dream with us. We are asking them to get out of the way.

Our organisation, PANTHEON, has already built Axus Search, a free search engine and encyclopedia with more than 77 million verified articles across 389 languages. No ads. No paywall. No catch. The technology exists. The methods exist. What is missing is the political will and the coordination.

389 languages done. 6,781 to go.

Add your name below. Not for us. For every child who has ever been told, in one way or another, that the language of their home is not good enough for the knowledge of the world.

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