7. HUMAN EMANCIPATION
Every language both liberates and imprisons its users, giving them the ability to communicate among themselves but barring them from communication with others. Designed as a universally accessible means of communication, Esperanto is one of the great functional projects for the emancipation of humankind -- one which aims to let every individual citizen participate fully in the human community, securely rooted in his or her local cultural and language identity yet not limited by it.
     We maintain that exclusive reliance on national languages inevitably puts up barriers to the freedoms of expression, communication and association. We are a movement for human emancipation.

Prague, July 1996