The 43rd UNESCO General Conference is scheduled to take place in Samarkand in 2025, the European Geopolitical Forum reports.

This marks the first time Uzbekistan will host the biennial event. Historically, these conferences have primarily been hosted at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris since 1986. However, there have been eight exceptions, with meetings held in cities like Mexico City (1947), Beirut (1948), Florence (1950), Montevideo (1954), New Delhi (1956), Nairobi (1976), Belgrade (1980), and Sofia (1985).

The General Conference, a staple since 1946, brings together representatives from all UNESCO member countries, observers, and various intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. These sessions are pivotal in shaping the primary focus of UNESCO's initiatives.

Uzbekistan is preparing to host the 43rd session of the UNESCO General Conference.

The decision on this was made at the previous session in November 2023. For the first time since 1985, the event will be held outside Paris.

The conference will focus on discussions and decisions on UNESCO’s activities. In addition to Samarkand, conference events will also be held in the cities of Tashkent, Bukhara, Khiva, and Shahrisabz.

Samarkand was not chosen as the host venue by chance. It is not only a great historical open-air museum city but has also hosted several important international events over the past years.

At next year’s UNESCO conference, officials plan to develop projects for establishing the State Museum of the Great Silk Road in Samarkand, restoring Amir Timur’s gardens, restoring the Bibi-Khanum complex — as well as a master plan for protecting the historical center of Bukhara, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

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, preparing facilities in Tashkent and Samarkand, and the necessary hotel facilities.

Cultural events, excursions, and high-level receptions will be organized in Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, and Shakhrisabz during the session.

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 Art and Culture Development Foundation of Uzbekistan. The main operator in preparing for the organization of the session will be the state unitary enterprise InterForum.

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 information in foreign countries of more than 3000 years of history of the development of Uzbekistan’s statehood, the scientific, cultural and spiritual heritage of great Uzbek 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 Cultural Heritage Agency, together with the Art and Culture Development Foundation, 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”.