CIUTI Forum 2015

Palais des Nations, Room XVIII
Thursday, January 15, 2015 at 9:00 a.m.

Mr. State Secretary
Distinguished participants
Dear Colleagues and Friends:

A warm welcome to the Palais des Nations to all of you. We are very pleased to continue the good tradition of hosting the CIUTI Forum – a long-standing partner of the United Nations. Hosting the Forum is a demonstration of our continued commitment to the principle of multilingualism, and to outreach and training activities that involve partner universities and academic institutions.

We greatly appreciate welcoming so many distinguished language professionals from across the world. Thank you for your engagement with the United Nations. And I am particularly pleased to have the opportunity to thank also the Swiss Confederation and the Canton of Geneva, together with the large academic community here in Geneva, which is a tremendous asset for the United Nations and all our partners here.

Language professionals – at the United Nations and throughout our international organizations – are the backbone of the multilateral process. They have been pivotal in advancing the work of international organizations and the international community more broadly. And we need their unique expertise to address the complex challenges before us constructively and meaningfully.

The theme of this Forum - correctness of language, confidentiality and credibility - provides a particularly good opportunity to explore new ways of communicating more effectively at a time of profound change and also uncertainty at the global level. All of you participating here work on a daily basis on shaping a proper environment for multilingual communication while safeguarding the character, meaning, precision and confidentiality of delicate processes that have a direct impact on people’s lives.

For its part, the United Nations continuously implements new initiatives to advance multilingualism – including expansion of resources and services for the language and communication programmes for staff members; outreach missions focusing on regions, countries and universities that attract multilingual individuals, and the delivery of high-quality conference services to Member States.

To share just a couple of practical examples, we are working to improve our language examination procedures, where we are adopting best practices in test construction, administration and evaluation; we are working to streamline our internship arrangements and to consolidate the assistance programme for MoU universities, which has become the practical mechanism for identification of talent and providing the necessary guidance to partner universities where future candidates are scouted and trained. These efforts are key to the rejuvenation efforts made by the Organization and to the necessary succession planning.

In this global context and as one of the biggest conference centres in the world, we here at UNOG have also intensified efforts to promote multilingualism. Our website now includes a special portal on multilingualism, with features on interpretation, translation, language training and other useful links. Already, the Library at UNOG has a rich and historically important collection that covers 123 languages. Furthermore, I am now posting blogs related to the work of UNOG in English, French, Spanish and German, thereby reaching a wide public. Each of these individual steps makes a difference in the global multilingual universe and I believe that each one of us has to play our part to advance this important work.

We focus on four pillars to attract new talent: refining recruitment policies and procedures concerning language professionals, outreach and pedagogical assistance, training, testing and selection. To achieve these objectives, proposals have been made to the Department of General Assembly Affairs and Conference Management to cast the net wider, to introduce paid traineeships, and to improvise testing procedures at the United Nations to assess the ability of language professionals to translate UN texts in a modern work environment.

Communication shapes perceptions. And this is why multilingual communication is also a key aspect of the International Geneva Perception Change Project that I have initiated with a range of partners here in Geneva to bring about a better and more sophisticated understanding of the impact of our collective work. In this effort, we will need to communicate a redefined and compelling message and to reach the target audience. And we will need to do it in all six official languages, and where possible beyond. Also in this effort, language skills and communications expertise is critical, just as they are in the traditional multilateral processes.

In conclusion, let me commend the CIUTI organizers for the commitment to multilingualism and I thank State Secretary Dell’Ambrogio for joining us today. He has done extraordinary work in the field of education and research over the years and we can certainly take inspiration from that to fine-tune our approach on outreach to universities.

I wish you all success in your exchanges during this Forum.

And we look forward to welcoming back CIUTI in 2016.

Thank you very much.