The Ministry of Culture and Sports is set to organise a regional conference on cultural diversity to highlight its importance and role in bringing people closer.
The event is being organised by the Ministry in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Asian Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), under the patronage of Minister of Culture and Sports H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali.
The conference will be held in Doha on September 2 and 3, 2019 under the title ‘Culture: Bridges of Dialogue and Understanding’. It will also include a number of discussion sessions and working papers as well as speeches by officials on the importance of culture of people of Asian countries as an important bridge of communication between peoples.
The conference is part of Qatar’s chairmanship of the ACD this year, with the participation of specialists in various fields in the relevant institutions from a number of countries, as well as a group of representatives of the ACD countries. Pornchai Danvivathana, Secretary-General of the ACD will deliver a speech on this occasion.
Two key panel discussions will be held on each day of the conference. The first session of the first day will discuss ‘Cultural Diversity and its Implications for Asian Societies’, which will be addressed by Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar, former Malaysian Foreign Minister, the Ambassador of Tajikistan to Qatar, Khisrav Sohibzoda, and Fatma Al Remaihi, Chief Executive Officer of the Doha Film Institute.
The second session will be under the title ‘Asian Countries Experiences in Cultural Diversity’ and a number of cultural experiences will be reviewed during it by experts from Japan, Qatar and Oman.
Commenting on this, Director of the Department of Asian Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Khalid Al Hamar said: “This cultural workshop is one of the main activities that comes within the context of the State of Qatar to chair the Asian Cooperation Dialogue in 2019. The State of Qatar hosted a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Member States, a businessmen forum and a workshop on education during the first half of this year.”
“Qatar is keen to support and promote constructive and fruitful interaction between the Asian countries in all areas of cooperation and open doors to identify common opportunities that will help to improve the standard of living of peoples and increase the size of competitiveness with the countries of the world,” he added.
Hamad Al Zakiba, Director of the Culture and Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture and Sports said, “This conference aims to promote cultural diversity, which occupies a key position in human rights as a sign of common humanity and recognition of multiple identities, through the use of language, education and advanced means of communication to reduce obstacles.”
The ACD was launched in 2001 and has 34 member countries. It had its first meeting in Thailand in 2002 with the participation of 18 founding countries from Asia
