UAE declares 2016 the Year of Reading

Khalifa declares 2016 the Year of Reading as Mohammad Bin Rashid instructs Cabinet to prepare framework

6 December

WAM

The UAE has declared 2016 as the Year of Reading to create a generation of book lovers and consolidate the country’s position as a global capital for knowledge and culture.

President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan made the declaration yesterday.

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, instructed a committee to be set up to supervise the nationwide initiative. He also directed the Cabinet to develop a national framework to ensure the creation of a new generation of readers.

“A nation and its people cannot progress without reading. The scientists, researchers and innovators that will lead the future will not come from nowhere. We have to create them on the basis of a love for reading and a passion for knowledge and curiosity,” Shaikh Mohammad said in a series of tweets.

Shaikh Khalifa thanked all organisations, departments and individuals in the UAE for their contribution to the success of 2015 as the year of innovation, and stressed that the nation was now on the right track for innovation and will reap its fruits soon.

We gave our directives that the year 2016 be the year of reading because reading is the basic skill for a new generation of scientists, intellectual, researchers and innovators,” Shaikh Khalifa said. “Establishment of a knowledge-based economy and changing the path of development is based on science and innovation. This requires nurturing a generation of readers fully aware of developments happening around them in the world as well as of the best ideas and the latest theories,” he said.

Shaikh Khalifa also underscored the importance of reading in promoting tolerance, openness and intercultural communication.

Commenting on the initiative, Shaikh Mohammad said: “We are preparing a comprehensive national framework to bring about behavioural change in our society and produce a generation of readers. We aim to make the UAE a capital of knowledge. We have a reading crisis in the Arab world. We have to push the younger generation to read if we are to form a path of growth and knowledge.”

“The student who reads is better than the one who doesn’t — the same goes for the employee, doctor or engineer. A society of readers is an advanced society, open-minded to the surrounding world. Our goal is to make the UAE a beacon of knowledge and education, just as Baghdad, Andalusia, Granada and others were centres of enlightenment, knowledge and civilisation over many centuries,” Shaikh Mohammad said in his tweets.

“We should acknowledge that the present generations do not read and we do not compliment ourselves when it comes to developing these generations and the government is responsible to help prepare educated, intellectual and cultural generations who are empowered with knowledge.”

Shaikh Mohammad said the committee tasked with supervising the project will develop an integrated strategy to spread a culture of reading across all sectors.

What next?

• Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid has instructed a higher committee to be set up to supervise the nationwide initiative. He directed the Cabinet to start work immediately on developing a comprehensive national framework to ensure the creation of a new generation of readers.

• The Cabinet has approved the declaration of 2016 as the Year of Reading in the UAE, and instructed competent authorities to start preparing a national framework that promotes reading among Emirati generations, in a quest to create a generation of lifetime readers.

• Shaikh Mohammad said the committee will include members from the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Community Development, Ministry of Education, and prominent personalities supervising cultural and literary events in the UAE.

• The committee will develop an integrated strategic plan and a comprehensive framework to promote reading and bring about social and behavioural change to foster a culture of reading.