In a landmark decision, Abu Dhabi has included Hindi as the third official language besides Arabic and English to improve access to justice.
This is aimed at helping Hindi speakers 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 Abu Dhabi Judicial Department website, the Press Trust of India quoted the judicial body.
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According to official figures, the UAE population is estimated to be around five million of which 2/3rd are immigrants from foreign countries. The 2.6 million strong constitutes Indian community in the UAE is the largest expatriate community in the country.
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, the Press Trust of India reported.
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“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,” Mr Al Abri was quoted as saying by the Khaleej Times.
Mr Al Abri explained that the adoption of new languages comes as part of the 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.
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