[dropcap]I[/dropcap]nternational Women’s Day is an annual celebration of the respect, honor and appreciation towards women across the world. In recent years, the annual event has gained decent recognition, giving a chance to celebrate achievements in the women’s movement and to inspire further progress through both local and international action.

On this occasion, the Amazigh World News team would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all women across the globe including the Amazigh women of Tamazgha/North Africa, to whom we owe so much.

We also want to assure that we will continue to defend Amazigh women’s rights, try to help them in their daily struggle for a better life, work to promote their role in society, and create a suitable platform that helps them to actively participate in civil society, political leadership and economic development.[ads1]

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“Languages Matter!”

Tamazight language matters!

Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage. All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

Among the list of recommendations made to the Member States by the declartion of this International day one reads:

(a) create the conditions for a social, intellectual and media environment of an international character which is conducive to linguistic pluralism;

(b) promote, through multilingual education, democratic access to knowledge for all citizens, whatever their mother tongue, and build linguistic pluralism; strategies to achieve these goals.

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The 21st of February is celebrated as World Mother Tongue Day. The UNESCO, which hopes to make people conscious of the importance of the mother tongue, declares in its latest publication Education in a Multilingual World (2003), that the most suitable language for teaching basic concepts to children is the mother tongue.

Indeed, the UNESCO declared this as early as 1953 in its report The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education. Yet, as the world modernized, the smaller and weaker mother tongues started dying. The schooling system, the media and the jobs all demanded the languages of power – the languages used in the domains of power i.e. administration, government, military, commerce, education, media etc. – which had to be learned by people in their own interest. As globalization increases, languages die.

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The 21st of February reminds us that, despite this inequality of power between our mother tongues and the languages of power, we must not give up hope. We must be conscious of the significance of our mother tongues, which give us identity; which are repositories of culture and which, in the final analysis, make us what we are.

February 2, 2018

The Tunisian government published images and official release dates for the new coin that recognize Jugurtha, king of Numidia from 118 to 105, who struggled to free his North African kingdom from Roman rule, the new coin also include a map of his kingdom. according to a statement released by the government, the new coin has been released to mark one of the most important moments in the Amazigh history of Tunisia.

The aim is to spread the Amazigh culture and to educate the different segments of the Amazigh identity and revive the Amazigh roots in history of Tunisia and North Africa. as well as to encourage the young generations to read and write in their mother tongue and learn new terminology and various dialects of the Amazigh language.

This reference population is based on people native to Tunisia, in North Africa. Tunisia’s location on the Mediterranean Sea in North Africa contributes to its broad genetic diversity. Predominantly North African, there are also clearly European and Arabian components. The Arabian component likely arrived in two waves, one with the arrival of agriculture from the Middle East beginning around 8,000 years ago, and one with the Islamic conquest of the seventh century. Tunisians also carry components from other regions of Africa, such as Western/Central Africa.

The Arab identity of Egypt also fall down the drain, According to the same source, the Egyptian native’s genetic composition is 68 percent North African, 17 percent Arabian, 4 percent Jewish diaspora, and 3 percent from Eastern Africa, Asia Minor and Southern Europe each.

Matmata, and a handful of similar towns across Tunisia, is situated on a shelf of sandstone that is soft enough to excavate with hand tools, but sturdy enough to provide homes for centuries. The homes are grouped around a central courtyard and connected to other courtyards with more rooms forming an underground labyrinth.

The festival aims to disseminate film culture and the progress achieved in various branches of film art and to strength the relations among filmmakers throughout the world in general and Mediterranean countries in particular.

When:
August 8 . 26 2016
Where:
Sfax, Tunisia
Event Website:
http://sfaxcinemed.com
Info:
+216 20 965 956
[email protected]

Paris  (AWN) |

International Alliance for the defending of Rights and Freedom or AIDL is a French non-governmental organization devoted to defending human rights and public freedoms of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Maha Jouini is a prominent Tunisian journalist and Amazigh activist for the rights of indigenous people in North Africa with a special focus on the Amazigh issue situation in Tunisia.

AIDL