L’instauration du régime linguistique onusien et son évolution jusqu’à la fin de la guerre froide: L’Assemblée générale, entre multilinguisme de droit et monolinguisme de fait

The United Nations has multilingualism by law, which allows any working language to
be used for speeches at the General Assembly (GA). Thus, a Chinese delegate can speak in Spanish, Arabic, English, French or Russian at his convenience. If we can see here a form of equality between nations, is the choice of any language by any speaker really neutral? Is there not necessarily a political ulterior motive?
Although the United Nations defines multilingualism as a tool “promoting tolerance [...], as well as greater efficiency, better results and greater involvement”. 4 When the General Assembly decided in 1946 to have two working languages and five official languages, it was not only as a means to establish world peace through understanding of all, by all.
“It is clear that languages reflect power relationships” 5, they are the incarnation of the loss of influence of the French language and France, the rise of the English language and the United States and the desire of other states to play a role on the international scene. The adoption of new language resolutions by the GA represents much more than the development of a new legal rule. They became a vehicle for geopolitical rebalancing and historical context, all against the backdrop of the Cold War.
Multilingualism then becomes a source of linguistics, logistical, legal and ethical problems. And despite the establishment of a system “in which English monolingualism disputes the primacy of multilingualism”6, it can be seen as one of the main actors in UN inaction.