The Story of French (46 page)

The reason that non-francophone countries want to join the Francophonie is that its activities, though primarily focused on defending French, now go beyond language. As Abdou Diouf said when we met him at his office in March 2004, “The number of applicants proves that other countries recognize themselves in what we stand for.” In fact, both Boutros-Ghali and Diouf succeeded in getting the member countries to operate as a bloc in international forums, where they adopt common positions. At the 2002 Beirut summit, which took place just weeks before the U.N. Security Council met to hammer out a resolution on Iraq, the Fifty-three heads of state and government agreed to express confidence in the power of institutions such as the U.N.

The Francophonie took a long time to elaborate a coherent policy on language that would satisfy member states. Opposing English seems like an uphill battle, and all the more so since member countries like Canada, Mauritius and Cameroon hold both French and English as official languages. As to the notion of promoting French, this was also a contentious issue with the former colonies of France and Belgium, where French coexists and often competes with other national languages. At the Dakar summit of 1989, the Francophonie decided its mandate would be to promote French and
langues partenaires
(partner languages), a position that was politically sustainable to all.

It is from this basis that the Francophonie was capable of building a very effective stance on plurilingualism. While its positions on democracy, education, development and cooperation are pretty much the same as those of other international organizations, the support for plurilingualism is what distinguishes it. The basic idea behind plurilingualism is that a single language (in this case, English) is not sufficient for international relations. English-speaking media often ridicule the Francophonie for waging a rearguard, losing battle against English. There may be some truth to that, but the Francophonie has very shrewdly adapted its pro-French stance by pushing the more universal principle of plurilingualism, which has become its main battle cry in international organizations and the reason for the Francophonie’s renewed effectiveness in the last few years.

Plurilingualism is different from multilingualism. Institutions can be said to be multilingual because they have many official languages, whether people there use them or not. Plurilingualism refers to the state of actively promoting the use of different languages in international institutions—ultimately, to the actual efforts individuals within those organizations make to practise more than one language. In 1998, at a symposium on plurilingualism in Geneva, Boutros Boutros-Ghali made a strong case as to why plurilingualism was necessary:

[The first reason is] the respect for equality between states. We all know that forcing international civil servants, diplomats or ministers to express themselves in a language that is not theirs amounts to putting them in a situation of inferiority. It deprives them of the capacity for nuance and refinement, which amounts to making concessions to those who speak that language as a mother tongue…. Also, we all know that concepts that look similar often differ from one civilization to the next. For instance, the word
democracy
in English doesn’t refer to the same concept as the word
démocratie
in French. There are many more similar examples…. Words express a culture, a way of thinking and a world view. For all these reasons, I think that much in the way democracy within a state is based on pluralism, democracy between states must be based on plurilingualism.

This position explains why countries such as Greece and Austria want to join the Francophonie; even though they don’t have French-speaking populations, the organization could give them leverage to protect their own languages on the international stage.

English-speaking countries make regular appeals for the use of English (and the elimination of other languages) in international organizations for the sake of “simplicity” or “efficiency.” But Diouf and the Francophonie have shifted the frame of the argument from one of efficiency to one of democratic principles. In their view, language is a political issue in that the use of English puts all non-English speakers at a disadvantage. While not directly attacking English, plurilingualism attaches the issue of language diversity to a political value—democracy—that is very difficult to contest. The defence of plurilingualism has allowed the Francophonie to rally speakers of Arabic, Spanish, Russian, German and more to its cause. Ingo Kolboom, a professor at the University of Dresden and one of the very few specialists on the Francophonie outside the French-speaking world, claims, “Francophonie is an attempt, maybe the only one, to balance the discourse on the American-style global village.”

Of course, the Francophonie’s purpose is still to protect and promote French. At the moment it is especially preoccupied with the declining use of French in international institutions (the 2002 Beirut summit even called for “urgent action” on this). French and English are both working languages of the Secretariat General of the U.N., but English has been encroaching on French since the 1970s. The Francophonie has permanent representatives in the U.N.’s New York and Geneva offices, as well as in Addis Ababa, at the head office of the African Union, and has created groups of informal ambassadors in various institutions to monitor the use of French in those institutions. It created one for the European Union in 2003, and another for Washington in 2004. “We have taken a lot of flak from people who consider us a nuisance, but there’s no turning back. We can’t give up,” said Ridha Bouabid, a former ambassador who represents the Francophonie at the U.N. in New York. As we explained in chapter 13, the Francophonie’s campaign is not driven by hurt pride. The issue at stake is, Who will have the advantage of using their mother tongue in the incredibly finicky and subtle (in fact, politely brutal) discussions that are the mainstay of international institutions?

It is very unlikely that the Francophonie alone will bring French back on a par with English, particularly at the U.N. (more on this in chapter 19). As part of its effort to defend French, the Francophonie has actually been documenting the decline of French in international institutions. Studies made by Francophonie members, most notably France, have measured this decline by watching how often French is chosen for correspondence and public speeches, and how many translations are made into French. The Francophonie has fifty-three members, but at the U.N. only thirty-nine countries request their correspondence to be in French. In the European Union, French and English were still on a par in 1997 as the primary language for written documents, with about forty-two percent each. But by 2003 English had risen to seventy-two percent while French had fallen to eighteen percent. Overall statistics show that English is progressing everywhere to the detriment of all other languages, including French, although French is still faring better than the others. The case of the U.N. office in Geneva has shown that even a francophone environment outside the office door does not stop the progression of English. Putting European institutions in francophone cities such as Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg will not be enough to stop English either. Actions have to be taken, and the Francophonie knows it.

The Francophonie is more hopeful about reversing the trend towards English at the European Union, partly because the decline of French there was caught much earlier. Stéphane Lopez, a sociolinguist, was appointed in May 2003 to run the Francophonie’s ten-year program to boost French in the European Union. Lopez has targeted three groups: the ambassadors and negotiators at the EU, the national civil servants who deal directly with the EU and its ministers, cabinet directors and heads of states, and the journalists who cover the EU. The number of national civil servants who take French classes has risen from 1,300 in 2002 to 7,400 in 2005. As for senior EU executives, the number who take French classes has risen from forty to seven hundred. For the politicians Lopez has created a special program in which they are invited for three weeks of immersion in Spa or Avignon, with a private instructor (who could resist?). Lopez is also working on eight national academies that train diplomats. “Our line with them is that, though English is necessary, it is not enough,” he said, admitting that it will probably take ten years just to evaluate the program’s results. He added, “But the increase in enrolment shows that there is a demand for French at the top level everywhere.”

Only time will tell if the Francophonie’s efforts to boost the use of French will bear fruit. “Europe is the main battle ground,” says Roger Dehaybe, who was chief executive officer of the Agence internationale de la Francophonie until 2006. “If French disappears from European institutions, entire countries will start to consider it less important for science and diplomacy.” To its credit, the Francophonie has recognized that the sorry situation of French at the U.N. and the European Union is only partly a result of the attractiveness of English. The Francophonie and its individual members sat on their hands for years over the issue. Francophone countries did not take a unified public stance on plurilingualism at the U.N. until 1995, and did not make it effective before 2002. In the 1990s neither France nor Belgium nor the Francophonie voiced a complaint when the European Commission required that Eastern European countries apply in English (many are part of the Francophonie). Of course, British and American diplomats did not sit idly by the whole while (as we saw in chapter 13); the Commonwealth played a strong role by frequently forming unified blocs over the issue in international institutions. But the fact that francophone countries took forty years to get the Francophonie up and rolling cannot be blamed on others.

It is fair to say today that Francophone countries have learned from their mistakes. They are looking to elbow their way into the international political arena in a way that will give them clout to match that of the Commonwealth. In 2005 Abdou Diouf convinced the member states of the Francophonie to place its subsidy arm, the Agence internationale de la Francophonie (the former ACCT), under the authority of its political arm to create the single Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. This should allow more rapid action. And the Francophonie’s decision to demand more militancy of its members comes at a good moment, as Europe recently created a commissioner for multiculturalism. With eleven of the twenty-five European countries also being members of the Francophonie—and soon thirteen out of twenty-seven, when Hungary and Romania are integrated in 2007—many European civil servants and politicians will be hearing about plurilingualism in the coming years.

Even if the position of French has been eroding in the European Union, the language remains well entrenched in related organizations like the European Court of Justice, where proceedings are done in French, the European Tribunal of First Instance, the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg and the Press Room of the European Commission in Brussels. This is a good institutional base.

The Francophonie’s program is to start using its combined weight to act as a unified
bloc
within important international organizations. In the case of the African Union, twenty-five of the fifty-three member countries are also members of the Francophonie, excluding Algeria and Comoros, which are both de facto francophone countries. In the case of the Arab League, six out of twenty-two member countries are in the Francophonie—again, excluding Algeria and Comoros. In the case of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), eleven of the thirty member states are part of the Francophonie, as are three of the ten members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Even among the thirty members of the South Pacific Commission, five are members of the Francophonie.

After decades of hesitation, the Francophonie has turned itself into an increasingly effective organization, but it still has its defects—the main one being financial. The Francophonie’s overall budget is a little over eighty million euros, which compares well to the Commonwealth’s thirty-eight million pounds but remains insufficient for everything it’s trying to do. All international organizations are facing the same problem—the U.N. can hardly afford to be the U.N. anymore. But in the 1990s the Francophonie’s budget did not increase to keep pace with the number of new member countries being admitted. The Africans and Asians lobbied hard to make sure the Francophonie’s resources would be shared as little as possible with countries in Eastern Europe.

There’s certainly money out there. The French are often criticized for being lukewarm francophones. But France contributes a hefty fifty-five percent of the Francophonie’s budget (compared to thirty percent of the Commonwealth’s budget from the U.K.). The other rich members—Canada, Belgium and Switzerland—could probably afford to give more than their combined twenty-five million euros, or about forty-five percent of the budget (Canada contributes twenty-two percent of the Commonwealth’s budget alone). The rest of the francophone countries have a symbolic contribution of below five percent of the budget. The most surprising figure remains the small contribution of Quebec, which has little excuse for contributing a mere 2.5 million euros or 4.1 percent of the budget. After all, Quebec has an advanced economy and is over eighty percent French-speaking. Yet it contributes less in proportion and in number than Switzerland and Belgium, which have fewer francophones than Quebec, but chip in to the level of 6.6 and 8.6 percent of the budget respectively. “It remains a great mystery,” says Jean-Louis Roy, who ran the ACCT from 1989 to 1998. “If Quebec wants to raise its profile internationally, what other official channel does it have? I just don’t get it.” In fact, neither do we.

If the Francophonie (capital F) were the only organization acting on behalf of French speakers, the francophonie (small F) would be in bad shape, but luckily that’s not the case. Much in the way that French survived in North America because French Canadians, Acadians and Franco-Americans organized themselves, francophones of the world started taking care of themselves long before the official Francophonie was created. In the nineteenth century the diplomats and intellectuals who created the Alliance française and the Alliance israélite universelle got France’s cultural diplomacy rolling. Many francophone associations have done the same thing for the francophonie. The existence of an institutional Francophonie is largely the product of these private efforts.