Abu Dhabi includes Hindi as third official court language
11 Feb 2019
In a landmark decision, Abu Dhabi has included Hindi as the third official language used in its courts, alongside Arabic and English, as part of a move to improve access to justice.
The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department said it has extended the adoption of interactive forms of statement of claims filed before courts by including the Hindi language alongside Arabic and English in labour cases.
This will help Hindi speaking people to learn about litigation procedures, their rights and duties without a language barrier, in addition to facilitating registration procedures via unified forms available through the ADJD website, the judicial body said.
UAE has an estimated population of around nine million, of which 2/3rd are immigrants from foreign countries. The Indian community in the UAE, numbering 2.6 million, constitutes 30 per cent of the total population and is the largest expatriate community in the country, according to official figures.
Yousef Saeed Al Abri, undersecretary of the ADJD, said the adoption of multilingual interactive forms for claim sheets, grievances and requests, aims to promote judicial services in line with the plan Tomorrow 2021, and increase the transparency of litigation procedures.
“This is in addition to facilitating registration procedures to the public through simplified and easy forms and raising litigants’ legal awareness via interactive forms of the statements of claims, to ensure access to the legal materials related to the subject of the dispute,” the Khaleej Times quoted Al Abri as saying.
Al Abri said the adoption of new languages is part of the adoption of bilingual litigation system, the first phase of which was launched in November 2018, through the adoption of procedures requiring the plaintiffs to translate the case documents in civil and commercial lawsuits into English, if the defendant is a foreigner.
“The foreign investor receives the case files translated, thus contributing to the provision of a global judicial service that meets the requirements of residents in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi,” he added.