In 2025, Samarkand will host the 43rd session of the General Conference of UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The decision on this was made at the previous session in November 2023. As Gazeta.uz wrote, the event will be held outside Paris for the first time since 1985.
On March 15, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree on measures to prepare for the international forum.
The document notes that “in recent years, cooperation between Uzbekistan and UNESCO has risen to a new level. UNESCO serves as an important platform for further enhancing and strengthening the authority of our country in the world community, expanding and deepening bilateral and multilateral cooperation.”
“In 2017-2023, 14 unique examples of our national cultural heritage are included in the UNESCO lists and are recognized internationally as a heritage of humanity. The city of Bukhara is included in the Network of Creative Cities. In September 2023, the 1050th anniversary of the birth of the great thinker and encyclopedist Abu Rayhon Beruniy was widely celebrated at UNESCO headquarters,” the resolution says.
The resolution established an organizing committee for preparations for the UNESCO General Conference, headed by Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov.
The session will be held at the Silk Road Samarkand tourist complex. The organizing committee will deal with all organizational issues related to the session. In particular, he was tasked with equipping event venues in Samarkand with modern technical and telecommunications equipment, as well as preparing facilities in Tashkent and Samarkand and the necessary hotel facilities.
During the session, cultural events, excursions and high-level receptions will be organized in Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Shakhrisabz.
It is planned to create media products and audiovisual works about the significance of the session in Samarkand. They will be broadcast in domestic and foreign media, and also posted on social networks “using techniques such as hashtags and challenges”.
The book-album “Samarkand - at the crossroads of world civilizations” will be published in Uzbek, Russian, English and French, as well as a series of postage stamps and envelopes, calendars and visual propaganda, commemorative coins, silver and gold coins.
The working body of the organizing committee is the Foundation for the Development of Culture and Art of Uzbekistan. The main operator in preparing for the organization of the session will be the state unitary enterprise InterForum. The first heads of ministries and departments are given personal responsibility for the timely and high-quality implementation of the instructions provided for by the resolution, as well as other operational instructions of the organizing committee and working body.
According to the resolution, from April 1, two additional staff positions of an adviser and a second secretary and an additional vehicle unit will be introduced into the staffing table of the Permanent Delegation of Uzbekistan to UNESCO.
The Organizing Committee, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as relevant ministries and departments were instructed to take measures for “widespread propaganda in foreign countries of more than 3000 years of history of the development of our statehood, the scientific, cultural and spiritual heritage of our great ancestors , who have made an invaluable contribution to world civilization, the results of the reforms carried out in our country, as well as the further development of cooperation with them”.
The Council of Ministers of Karakalpakstan, regional and Tashkent administrations, as well as relevant ministries and departments, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were instructed to organize “information and explanatory work aimed at detailing the significance of holding the session in our country, as well as turning Uzbekistan into one of the centers of world politics, the author of global initiatives”.
The Cultural Heritage Agency, together with the Foundation for the Development of Culture and Art, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, is tasked with organizing work to “preserve relevant cultural heritage sites in the city of Samarkand, as well as immersive and thematic exhibitions”.
