E/CN.4/2002/97 page 19 denied the collective and public use of its language (for example, in schools, the media, the courts, the administration) then any individual’s right to this language is severely curtailed. Therefore, language rights are nowadays proclaimed as human rights, which entail respect, protection and promotion by others and especially by State authorities. Numerous States have now adopted legislation concerning the protection of regional, minority or indigenous languages. For example, in New Zealand, the 1989 Education Act has been amended to ensure funding for Maori pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools and universities. The impetus for this came from Maori mothers insisting that the Maori reclaim the education of their children from birth through to adulthood. 61. From a historical perspective, however, State policies have not always recognized or protected the languages spoken by indigenous peoples or linguistic minorities. On the contrary, the intention of official linguistic, educational and cultural policies has often been the assimilation of such groups into the national mainstream, thus leading to language and culture loss. It has only been in recent years that these processes have been seen as being in violation of the human rights of the members of such linguistic communities, and they have sometimes been considered as a form of ethnocide.26 62. Nowadays, in some countries indigenous languages are recognized as national languages, at least in the regions in which they are widely used, and sometimes they have been accorded official status of some kind or another. In other cases, they may no longer be actually repressed but only tolerated as a private medium of communication and are not accorded any official status. In numerous indigenous linguistic communities around the world, it is common to find members of the older generation who maintain their language whereas the youth and children are more prone to suffer language loss, particularly when assimilationist policies are carried out. Article 30 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is clear: “In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons of indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language.” 63. The denial of the right to practice one’s own culture, religion or language may take many forms. Often, when the social and institutional environment is unfavourable for the preservation and development of indigenous cultures and languages, this right is in fact denied even when there is no formal prohibition or restriction involved. 2. Education 64. The use of the mother tongue in education and public communications is an important issue in the definition of the human rights of indigenous peoples. In contrast to the formerly widely extended and dominant idea of formal schooling as an instrument of assimilation and acculturation, through which indigenous children learn to speak the national language and replace their own mother tongue, current thinking on the subject tends more towards the opposite direction. Bilingual and intercultural education has become educational policy for indigenous communities in many parts of the world. Specialists in education agree that early schooling in