How A Half-Syrian Man Convinced The UN To Allow Human Rights Recordings In Maltese
The United Nations is now allowing people to upload recordings of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Maltese, and it’s all thanks to an email sent by a young half-Syrian, half-Maltese man.
Omar Rababah, a social worker and human rights activist who has lived his whole life in Malta, was scrolling through the UN’s website last November when he stumbled upon a feature that allows people to record the UNDHR in their own language and upload it to their website. This is part of ‘Add Your Voice’ – a multilingual UN campaign leading up to the 70th anniversary of the signing of the UNDHR this December.
However, Omar noticed that, while the campaign allowed people to upload recordings in 135 languages, Maltese was not one of them.
He emailed the UN about this, but was told that logistics required the campaign to be limited to languages with at least 3 million speakers.
Omar responded by accusing the UN of discriminating against Malta because of its small population.
“Please note that the Maltese language is the official language of Malta and is recognised by the European Parliament,” he wrote. “You are excluding a whole country here. I do not believe that this is right, and the fact that we are only 400,000 does not mean we should not be represented. I believe that this issue should be viewed from an interpretivist approach rather than from a positivist one.”
The UN then informed him it will do its best to add Maltese to its list of available languages, but warned this could prove difficult to their lack of human resources.
Omar heard nothing from the UN for the next seven months, until last Wednesday, when they emailed him to inform him that they had added Maltese as a language in their campaign and to encourage him to send in a recording.
“I may be annoying at times but it is persistence that gets you where you want to be,” he said in a Facebook status.
Omar Rababah is an activist for the integration of migrants within the Maltese community, and has been vocal in condemning racism and in urging migrants to learn the Maltese language.
“We are the result of so much intermixing,” he said in a recent interview with MaltaToday. “Even our language is a complete melting pot. So how can you even think about uttering racist remarks while using a language so imbued with the influence of different races?”
Tag someone who would love this story!
READ NEXT: Hundreds Gather By Valletta Harbour In Vigil For Drowned Asylum Seekers
