UNITED NATIONS, June 21 -- In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 20 Spanish-speaking countries have protested against what they called the "growing imbalance" in the use of languages at the United Nations, and urged the world body to take a more multilingual approach to diplomacy.
The letter, released late Tuesday, was signed by Mexico on behalf of 18 Latin American countries, Spain and Andorra. It complains that the United Nations is not fulfilling its obligations under a 1997 General Assembly resolution requiring that public documents and public information materials be made available in all six official languages of the organization.
Most of the documents in print and on the U.N. Internet sites, the letter says, show "a tendency to favor the use of only one language (English)."
"The gulf is widening between public information available in Spanish and that available in English," as Annan himself pointed out in a recent report on multilingual development, the letter said.
The signatories call the situation "disturbing and alarming to those we represent" and appeal to the secretary-general to ensure "that the necessary measures are taken, without delay whatever, to mitigate the alarming increase in the imbalance."
"This is not only a matter of principle, but also an effective way for the United Nations to present itself as a global institution that is truly representative of the entire world," the letter added.
Spanish is spoken by 400 million people worldwide and is one of the six official U.N. languages. The others are English, Arabic, Chinese, French and Russian. U.N. officials have argued that the cost of translating every document into all six languages would be prohibitive.
Spain, one of the countries that signed the letter, said "the tendency of not using more than one" language, particularly on the Internet, is one of the clearest examples of this inequality. In the letter, the 20 Spanish-speaking nations underlined that demographic forecasts indicate that some 550 million people will speak Spanish by 2050, and that the language already has 21 million users on the Internet.
The document urged Annan to establish Spanish sections "with adequate personnel and means," both at the Department of Public Information and in all other divisions that publish official information about the world body on the Internet.
In the last two years, following recommendations contained in the so-called Connor Report for the revamping of U.N. bureaucracy, the translation services have been urged to drastically reduce their output.
That report had also recommended that the General Assembly and other bodies of the world organization limit their overall production of documents. But U.N. officials who declined to be identified told United Press International that, in fact, there has been an increase of about 40 percent in the amount of official documents that require translation.
Working languages have been adopted for specific situations, with English and French mostly being used at the U.N. headquarters in New York, and English and Arabic used at U.N. institutions in the Middle East.
In 1996, when Annan was elected secretary-general, France had demanded that the candidate for the post spoke fluent French, as a means to counter what it called the "increasing encroachment of English" at the U.N.
After his election, Annan quipped that he was going to be a secretary-general "who speaks English with a French accent."NEWLN:
