Today, many populations are afraid of the increase in globalization. Periodically, new conflicts break out and these distant wars are often said to result from ethnic conflicts. Some people do not hesitate to draw hasty conclusions regarding the legitimacy of standardising cultures and imposing a single language as a means of avoiding further confrontation.

However, life in the real world suggests that a different analysis may be more appropriate.. The linguist Davis Crystal talks about the “…naivety of the idea that the use of a single language guarantees reciprocal understanding and peace, a world of new alliances and of global solidarity. There are so many examples that demonstrate the opposite that it would be impossible to name them all. It is sufficient to note that all of the large monolingual countries of the world have had their civil wars, and that when one examines the zones of war during the last decades of the 20th century, one is shocked by the fact that many of them are countries that are essentially monolingual (…) Rwanda and Burundi (…) standing out in Africa precisely by their absence of multilingualism.”

As a matter of fact, one of the deadliest conflicts of the 20th century broke out in Rwanda: the Tutsis and Hutus spoke the same language but this did not prevent them from killing each other. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Vanuatu possesses the highest linguistic diversity in the world, over a hundred languages for 250 000 inhabitants, and we never hear of any wars in Vanuatu…

It would seem more realistic to consider that, throughout the world, the recognition of all peoples and their inherent differences contributes to the prevention of conflicts, while any failure to respect the culture of others or any attempt to impose dominant cultures, fuels resentment, and even hatred, and in doing so can end up causing violence, conflict and war.