UNGA adopts India-sponsored resolution on multilingualism; Mentions Hindi language for first time

New Delhi: The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has adopted an India-sponsored resolution on multilingualism that mentions the Hindi language for the first time. The resolution passed yesterday urges the United Nations to continue spreading vital communications and messages in both official and non-official languages, including Hindi.

India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations T. S. Tirumurti said, multilingualism is acknowledged as a basic principle of the United Nations and expressed gratitude to the Secretary-General for supporting multilingualism. He said, for the first time, the Hindi language is mentioned in the resolution besides Bangla and Urdu for the first time in the resolution.

Mr Tirumurti said, Since 2018, India has provided an extra-budgetary contribution to the UN Department of Global Communications (DGC) to mainstream and consolidate news and multimedia content in the Hindi language.
As part of these efforts, ‘Hindi @ UN’ project was launched in 2018 with an objective to enhance the public outreach of the United Nations in the Hindi language and to spread greater awareness about global issues among millions of Hindi-speaking populations around the world.

The Indian Envoy further said, it is imperative that multilingualism at the United Nations in a true sense is embraced and India will support the UN in achieving this objective.

A UN statement said, multilingualism is recognized by the General Assembly as a core value of the Organization. As such, all United Nations Secretariat entities are expected to contribute actively and demonstrate their commitment to this joint endeavor.

The six official languages of the United Nations are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish, with English and French serving as working languages for the UN Secretariat.