UN Series: Language and the United Nations

On May 1, 2012, at The Church Center, 777 United Nations Plaza,  New York, the Universal Esperanto Association, in cooperation with the Center for Research and Documentation on the World Language Problems, and the scholarly journal Language Problems and Language Planning, organized a symposium on “Language and the United Nations.”  The symposium was announced as “a review and exploration of how languages affect the work of the United Nations family” and it brought together contributions by a wide range of professionals and academics.

Work on the symposium had begun a year earlier, in 2011.  On December 15, the Association organized a preliminary consultation on the same topic, which was attended by some forty people, among them representatives of NGOs, people associated with the UN, and academics.  At the December 15 event, Professor Humphrey Tonkin, of the University of Hartford, Connecticut, presented a paper entitled “Language and the United Nations,” which provided an overview of language policy at the United Nations and in the various organizations in the United Nations family.  The paper was then discussed by a panel consisting of Françoise Cestac, former UN Assistant Secretary-General, Roberto Borrera, of the UN Forum on Indigenous Issues, and Paolo Valore, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Milan, Italy, and visiting professor at New York University.  After further revision, this paper was circulated among people interested in the topic, many of whom them attended the May 1 symposium.

The May 1 event was attended by close to 100 people, among them ambassadors, United Nations officials, academics, and NGO representatives.

The first session featured opening remarks by Ambassador Filippe Savadogo, Permanent Representative of La Francophonie to the United Nations, and by Alassane Diatta, Chief of the French Translation Service, Department for General Assembly and Conference Management, United Nations, representing his department.  The opening session was followed by a session on language policy at the United Nations.  It featured two papers, the first by Marie-Josée de Saint Robert, Chief of the Languages Service, Division of Conference Management, UN Geneva, on  “Policy Regarding Language Use at the United Nations.” This presentation was followed by a paper by André Corrêa d’Almeida and G. Bahar Otcu (Columbia University) on “The Portuguese Language in the United Nations,” a review of the status of Portuguese at the UN and of arguments for its official status.

Additional sessions addressed “The Language Policy Background and Its Implications,” “Language Teaching and Learning,” and “The NGO Experience.”

The symposium’s rich and abundant programme made for some stimulating discussions among presenters of papers and the other participants, but there was a general feeling that time was insufficient to do full justice to the topic and that it was imperative to continue discussion, particularly on the UN-specific parts of the programme.  It was agreed that mechanisms should be found to allow the discussion to continue, particularly to examine certain major issues, for example the maintenance of multilingualism at the United Nations, the relationship among the Organisation’s working languages, and the ad hoc arrangements arrived at in the face of necessity, particularly in areas and situations away from the UN headquarters and the operation of formal language policy.