The culture of a country is the main marker of the identity of its people, which plays the most important role in its collective thought, which in turn results in the way it cooperate with other nations, and in a nut shell, cultural values of a country makes it stand out from others in the comity of nations. Hence every country is keen to keep its cultural purity and to nurture and promote it by inculcating cultural values in their young and growing generation.
The Ministry of Culture and Sports of the State of Qatar, in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), is set to organise a regional conference on cultural diversity to highlight its importance and role in bringing people closer. The conference, to be held in Doha on September 2 and 3 under the theme ‘Culture: Bridges of Dialogue and Understanding’, will include a number of discussion sessions, working papers and speeches by officials on the importance of culture of Asian countries as an important bridge of communication between peoples.
The first day of the conference will have a discussion on diversity and its impact on Asian societies and will share the experiences of Asian countries in the field of cultural diversity. A variety of cultural experiences from Qatar, Japan and Oman will be presented before the delegates. Discussions on the second day will focus on issues related to communication and rapprochement between the cultures of Asian countries.
The State of Qatar not only cherishes its rich cultural diversity, but also promotes and propagates it throughout the world through organising different activities and dialogue sessions. Every year, Qatar observes and celebrates year of culture, where it fruitfully exchanges cultural heritage and values with a selected foreign country, for example this year it is Qatar-India Year of Culture. To date, Qatar has played host to several cultural programmes from India, flying in a number of luminaries in the field of arts, crafts,, music and literature.
The State of Qatar, as the chair of ACD this year, is the right place for holding such a conference, which is aimed at promoting culture and dialogue, the two catalysts which can solve myriad problems the modern day world faces. Qatar is one of the 18 founding members of the ACD, which was set up in 2002 in Cha-Am, Thailand, for the promotion of the rich cultural diversity of the Asian continent.
Dialogue through arts and culture is a peaceful and powerful weapon when it comes to finding solutions for the vexing problems between nations and Qatar as a peace-loving country prefers to iron out differences through dialogue, hence no wonder this conference will also, add yet another golden feather to Qatar’s cultural hat.
