Call for applications: Indigenous Language Data Commons Incubator

As AI systems increasingly rely on large-scale language and cultural datasets, questions of governance, access and benefit-sharing have become increasingly critical.

Indigenous peoples are often underrepresented in these systems, while also facing risks related to data extraction, misuse and loss of control over cultural knowledge.

The Incubator directly addresses these challenges by supporting Indigenous-led data commons-community-driven governance frameworks that enable collective decision-making over how data is collected, accessed and used, while ensuring that benefits flow back to communities.

This represents an important data governance priority aligned with UNESCO's normative mandate on AI ethics, multilingualism, open science and rights-based digital transformation, and contributes concretely to the objectives of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

Co-designed with Indigenous data experts, including a 19-member global Steering Committee of Indigenous language data experts, and implemented in partnership with the GovLab and Microsoft, the Incubator will provide selected teams with mentorship, technical guidance and capacity-building support to develop their data commons initiatives.