Procedure at International Conferences Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2009
Languages of the conference
Official languages
The UN Model Rules propose:
Rule 69
Languages of the Conference
Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish shall be the languages of the Conference, unless the convening organ decides that not all these languages are required.
Rule 70
Interpretation
1. Speeches made in a language of the Conference shall be interpreted into the other such languages, unless such interpretation has not been requested by the representative of any State participating in the Conference.
2. A representative may speak in a language other than a language of the Conference if the delegation concerned provides for interpretation into one such language.
Rule 71
Languages of documents
1. Any reports submitted by the General Committee, a Main Committee or a Drafting Committee, as well as any report or final act of the Conference, shall be published in the languages of the Conference.
2. All resolutions and other formal decisions of the Conference shall be published in the languages of the Conference.
3. Treaty instruments adopted by a treaty-making conference shall be published in the languages in which they are authentic.
The UN Model Rules generally follow UNGA practice.
The number of official languages of conferences has been steadily increasing from the original French-only of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conferences. Both French and English were official languages of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nations, then English, French and Russian were recognised at the 1946 Paris Peace Conference.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.