The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992) was a significant move in international law to a more promotion-orientated perspective on language rights (May, 2001). May, drawing on the work of Klass, suggests that there are two broad approaches to language rights in international law: tolerance-orientated rights and promotion-orientated rights. While tolerance- orientated rights are primarily concerned with the right to preserving people's language in the private sphere, promotion-related rights are more concerned with minority languages' usage and recognition in the public sphere (May, 2001). It can safely be assumed that people's language rights in the private sphere are included and subsumed with promotion-related rights, for if a language is to be promoted, it has to not only be tolerated, but also accepted. This would then suggest that the UN's position was that the maintenance of minority languages and thus linguistic diversity was beneficial. https://339efcb25eb75e967b0d-ff8eeadd950d51fd1fc939dca75b3973.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/assets_green.swf