Bahasa Indonesia will make its historic debut as an official working language at the UNESCO General Assembly in November 2025, with Head of the Indonesian Language Agency Hafidz Muksin announcing that Bahasa Indonesia has become the 10th official language recognized by the global organization, joining English, Arabic, Mandarin, French, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Italian, and Portuguese.
This milestone achievement was secured through the unanimous approval of Resolution 42 C/28 at the 42nd UNESCO General Assembly on November 20, 2023, in Paris, France, marking a significant victory for Indonesia's decades-long effort to elevate its national language to international prominence and recognition.
Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Abdul Mu'ti will deliver a speech in Indonesian at this year's UNESCO General Assembly scheduled for November 1, 2025, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and November 24-25, 2025, at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, demonstrating the language's newfound official status on the world stage.
Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to France Mohamad Oemar emphasized that with over 275 million speakers worldwide and inclusion in curricula across 52 countries with at least 150,000 active foreign learners, Indonesian has evolved from its 1928 Youth Pledge origins as a unifying force into a truly global language connecting diverse communities.
Hafidz Muksin noted that this recognition surpasses even Japanese and Korean languages in UNESCO's official language hierarchy, fulfilling Article 44 of Law Number 24 of 2009 which mandates the Indonesian government to systematically increase Bahasa Indonesia's function as an international language while strengthening national sovereignty and cultural identity.
