Abu Dhabi adds Hindi as third language in courts

Abu Dhabi: The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department (ADJD) has added Hindi as the third official language to be spoken in the city's courts, alongside Arabic and English.

According to the ADJD, this step was aimed at helping foreigners 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 Department's website, The Khaleej Times reported.

"The adoption of multilingual interactive forms for claim sheets, grievances and requests, aims to promote judicial services and increase the transparency of litigation procedures," Yousef Saeed Al Abri, undersecretary of the ADJD, said on Saturday.

"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."

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 case documents in civil and commercial lawsuits into English, if the defendant is a foreigner. 

Of the United Arab Emirates' population of over 9 million people, 88.5 per cent are expatriate workers, according to official figures. 

Indians account for 38 per cent of the population.