Happy World Book, Copyright Day!

Yesterday, the UNESCO marked The 24th edition of World Book Book and Copyright Day. In this day, literature and reading are celebrated while focusing particularly on the importance of enhancing and protecting Indigenous languages. As vectors of knowledge, books bring people together around a story and a common heritage while revealing their specifications through different cultures, identities and languages. The focus on this topic is fully in line with the celebration of the International Year of the Indigenous Languages.

It is on this date in 1616 that Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors, such as Maurice Druon, Haldor K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.

It was a natural choice for UNESCO's General Conference, held in Paris in 1995, to pay a world-wide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone, and in particular young people, to discover the pleasure of reading and gain a renewed respect for the irreplaceable contributions of those, who have furthered the social and cultural progress of humanity. With this in mind, UNESCO created the World Book and Copyright Day.

Each year, UNESCO and the international organizations representing the three major sectors of the book industry - publishers, booksellers and libraries, select the World Book Capital for a one-year period, effective 23 April each year.

The city of Sharjah was selected for this year. With the slogan "Read - you are in Sharjah", a program for celebrations, to focus on six themes: inclusivity, reading, heritage, outreach, publishing and children. Among other things there will be a conference on freedom of speech, a contest for young poets, workshops for creating Braille books and tactile books as well as many events for Sharjah's multi-ethnic population. The city's objective is to foster a culture of reading in the United Arab Emirates and birth new initiatives to meet the challenge of literary creation in the area and in the rest of the Arab world.