Delegates
General Questions
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Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish are the six official languages of the United Nations. English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat and are used in day-to-day professional exchanges. The treaty bodies, in accordance with General Assembly resolution 68/268, may use a maximum of three of the official languages for their work, with the inclusion, on an exceptional basis, of a fourth when necessary to facilitate communication among the members. Each State party also retains the right to interact with the treaty bodies in any of the six official languages.
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The symbol is usually found at the top right corner of a document. A symbol serves as a unique identifier for a United Nations document. Each symbol is composed of numbers and letters which do not give any significant indication of the subject of a document. All language versions of a document carry the same symbol. Some publications have both a symbol and a sales number. The publication "United Nations document series symbols, 1946-1996" provides more information about the symbols used in this period. (ST/LIB/SER.B/5/Rev.5).
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Summary records are official documents constituting the permanent records of the United Nations bodies for which they are authorized. They are intended to provide a clear, concise and accurate account of the proceedings of a meeting. They summarize the views of the speakers and record the decisions taken. In striving to produce a concise account that focuses on the substantive issues, the précis-writer routinely omits certain details, such as courtesies, digressions and widely known facts, and summarizes others as briefly as possible. The summary record includes only speeches or statements that were actually made during the meeting.
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All United Nations documents from 1993; All resolutions of the Principal Organs from 1946; All Security Council plenary documents from 1946 in English, French and Spanish; All supplements to the Official records of the General Assembly from 1946; Older documents are being scanned. UN staff, delegates, accredited media or NGO representatives, can visit or contact the United Nations Office at Geneva Library to consult the hard copy. External researchers can access Official Records that have not yet been digitized by visiting one of the United Nations depository libraries or information centres.
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To obtain information about the meetings which will be held at the Palais des Nations, have a look at our meetings and events calendar.
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The official languages of the United Nations are: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.