WE explored in the last two articles how the idea of a pan¬-Arab heritage project was developed under the umbrella of the Arab League and coordinated by the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULT¬NAT).
At the beginning of the project, two workshops were car¬ried out and a steering committee was formed and sched¬uled to convene every six months, each time in a different Arab country. The first meeting was scheduled to take place in October 2007 and was hosted in Sharja., United Arab Emirates upon invitation from his highness Sheikh Sultan al-Qasemi, the Governor of Sharja.
During that meeting the objectives, time plan and proce¬dures of the work were discussed. Different groups of experts were formed in order to work on the different aspects of cultural heritage. At the end of the meeting and in the presence of Sheikh Sultan al-Qasemi, the Sharja dec¬laration was announced as follows:
“Based on the decision of the Council of Ministers of Communications and Information Technology to endure the projects that were approved by the team of the ‘Development of the Arab Strategy for Communications and Information’, the implementation of the “Memory of the Arab World” project, that was presented by Egypt (Tunisia. June 30 to July 1, 2007), was agreed upon with the objective to employ the communications and informa¬tion technology revolution and the use of modern programming systems in the documentation of cultural and natural heritage to preserve the memory of the Arab world and protect its unique Arabic identity.”
Thisis meeting was attended by specialists from the
United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan. Kuwait, Lebanon. Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, and Mauritania in addition to the representatives of the ISESCO, AI-Andalus Foundation, the Arab Union for Electronic Publishing and the senior assistant of the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. They discussed the project’s documents, work plans, organisational structure, formation of work groups suggested content of the Portal of the “Memory of the Arab World”, preliminary budget and the means of finance.
Recommendations of the meeting:
Endorsing the Arab team work for the execution of the project and to accomplish its objectives in the best way possible.
• Work, both individually and collectively, to pro¬vide human and financial resources needed for the project.
• Encouraging the cooperation with the different regional, national and international cultural organisations to benefit from their human and technical expertise.
• Cooperate with the different Arab NGOs serving in the field of documentation of Arab heritage.
Accordingly, all members of the executive committee, ~ attending the first meeting of the “Memory of the Arab World” project in Sharja on October 27-28, 2007, signed this declaration.
Carrying out the recommendations of the two work¬shops, the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage organised the first meeting of the execu¬tive committee of the “Memory of the Arab World”. That was done in collaboration with Sbarja Emirate and upon the generous invitation of Dr Sultan al-Qasemi, member of the High Council and Governor of Sharja Emirate, in Sharja on October 27 and 28, 2007.
