The activities of the sixth General Assembly of the General Public Diplomatic Network (GPDNet), chaired by Katara - the Cultural Village general manager Dr Khaled bin Ibrahim al-Sulaiti, continued yesterday.
The proceedings took place in the presence of Darwish Ahmed al-Shaibani, secretary-general of the GPDNet, and Dr Khaled Aba al-Zemat, assistant secretary-general of the network.
During the discussion sessions, the heads of official delegations talked about a series of topics, projects and programmes presented by Qatar and member states, which focused on experiences, exchanging ideas and activating joint work in the field of public international diplomacy, Katara said in a statement.
The sixth general assembly conference discussed the topics raised and included deliberations by the delegations of new countries who applied to join the network. A total of eight new countries submitted their credentials to the general assembly - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cuba, Georgia, Malaysia, Serbia, Kenya, South Africa and Ukraine) - and then put their requests to vote. These countries are represented at the conference by specialised cultural institutions related to public international diplomacy programmes under the supervision of prominent personalities who have achieved wide fame in the cultural sector in their countries.
The conference also featured the new electronic portal of the Global Public Diplomacy Network that was launched in the presence of delegations from the member states. This is part of an initiative of Katara with the aim of enabling permanent communication between the members, as this network provides a flexible and dynamic mechanism that facilitates the process of exchanging information and contributes to support to the cultural activities of the member states.
In this context, al-Shaibani said: “After receiving the leadership of the General Public Diplomatic Network, Katara pursues a distinguished strategy on the electronic side, by establishing an electronic portal linking the members of the network and providing many common services to them, in a safer and more developed way, based on many international standards and specifications and noting that social media is an essential part of this development.”
The electronic portal of the network contains news of recent events and an archive of older news. It also provides a fast and flexible search engine, facilitating the process of browsing and accessing any information, news or topic related to the cultural activities and events of the member countries, the statement adds.
Officials at the event yesterday.
