Context:

• The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department (ADJD) has added Hindi as the third official language to be used in the city’s courts, alongside Arabic and English.
• The move is aimed at helping foreigners to learn about litigation procedures, their rights and duties without a language barrier, in addition to facilitating registration procedures through unified forms available through the judicial department’s website.
• Salient Features of the decision:
• The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department 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.
• The adoption of multilingual interactive forms for claim sheets, grievances and requests, aims to promote judicial services and increase the transparency of litigation procedures. The move is designed to improve access to justice.
• It is in addition to facilitating registration procedures to the public through simplified and easy forms and raising litigants’ legal awareness through interactive forms of the statements of claims, to ensure access to the legal materials related to the subject of the dispute.
• 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.
• 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.
• According to official figures, the UAE population is estimated to be around nine million, of which 88.5 per cent are expatriate workers 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.