The State of Qatar participated in the extraordinary meeting of the Ministers of Cultural Affairs in the Arab world through video communication. His Excellency Salah bin Ghanem Al-Ali, Minister of Culture and Sports, spoke about the experience of the State of Qatar in the cultural, youth and sports fields in order to face the challenges posed by the Corona crisis. This meeting was organized by the Arab Organization for Education, Culture and Science (ALCO). Twenty countries participated in the meeting, in addition to the heads of Arab organizations concerned with Arab cultural work.
The meeting also discussed the direct effects of the crisis of the spread of the Coronavirus on the cultural sector, and the most important measures taken by the Arab countries to confront the crisis and its future plans for the next stage.
The aim of this extraordinary meeting is to enhance the Arab states’ preparations for the post-Corona phase and make it a top priority in order to protect cultural resources and support their role in sustainable development. This is attained by setting a joint Arab and integrated cultural plan that takes into account lessons learnt from the crisis and invests modern communication technologies in producing cultural content befitting the requirements of the stage and works to develop the cultural and creative digital industries.
The meeting also touched on the latest developments related to the program of Arab cultural capitals for the period between 2020 and 2026. The Arab cultural capitals were approved as follows: the city of Bethlehem in Palestine in 2021, the city of Irbid in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 2022, the city of Port Sudan in Sudan in the year 2023 CE, Tripoli in Lebanon in 2024, Benghazi in Libya in 2025, and Kuwait in 2026.