Abu Dhabi has decided to add Hindi as the third official language used in its courts, along with Arabic and English, as part of a move designed to improve access to justice.

The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department (ADJD) said, “It has extended the adoption of interactive forms of statement of claims filed before courts by including Hindi.

This step will certainly help the Hindi speakers to know more about litigation procedures, their rights and duties without a language barrier

Yousef Saeed Al Abri, undersecretary of the ADJD, “The adoption of multilingual interactive forms for claim sheets, grievances and requests, aims to promote judicial services 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.”

Al Abri tells 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.”

Ambassador Navdeep Suri, Welcoming the move said in a tweet, “This is an excellent step by Abu Dhabi that will certainly improve access to justice for India's blue collar workers. It also fits perfectly into the wider agenda of UAE's Year of Tolerance”.

-Sai Kumar