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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - A Jordanian female student, has been selected as one of the 60 winners of the United Nations 2016 "Many Languages, One World" essay contest.

Diana Marwan Khasawneh, a student from Yarmouk University, who wrote an essay about the UN in the Russian language, was selected from a pool of over 3,600 participants of the contest that is co-sponsored by the United Nations Academic Impact and ELS Educational Services.

During the celebration held Friday evening, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Cristina Gallach, congratulated the winners and praised the highly talented young students for their sense of purpose, foresightedness and ingenuity in addressing complex global issues and articulating a vision for an inter-dependent world.

"The essay contest promotes multilingualism and fosters cross cultural communication and understanding as a fundamental step towards achieving a more tolerant and peaceful world", she said.

"The contest, she added, also brings awareness among youth of the importance of learning languages as a way both to appreciate global diversity and celebrate the values and universe ideas that bind us together." The 60 winners of the 2016 edition of the contest were selected from a pool of over 3,600 entrants, representing 36 countries and 54 universities.

The Many Languages, One World contest challenged college and university students around the globe to write an essay examining global citizenship, cultural understanding and the role that multilingualism can play in fostering both.

Entrants submitted essays in one of the six official United Nations languages, which could be neither the student’s first language nor his/her primary language of instruction.

More than 9,000 individuals from 165 countries took part in the initial phase of the contest this year, writing in one of the UN official languages which are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

Students who participated in the contest are pursuing undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees. Winners include students of prestigious international universities such as University of Pennsylvania (USA), Xi’an International Studies University (China) and Bologna University (Italy). Their fields of study include language and linguistics, medicine, architecture, computer science and technology, business and sustainable research management.