The Arab Capital of Culture (Arabic: عاصمة الثقافة العربية, romanized: ʿāṣima ath-thaqāfa al-ʿarabiyya) is an initiative taken by the Arab League under the UNESCO[1] Cultural Capitals Program to promote and celebrate Arab culture and encourage cooperation in the Arab region.
| Year | City | Participating member |
|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Cairo[2] | Egypt |
| 1997 | Tunis[3] | Tunisia |
| 1998 | Sharjah[4] | United Arab Emirates |
| 1999 | Beirut[1] | Lebanon |
| 2000 | Riyadh[5] | Saudi Arabia |
| 2001 | Kuwait City[6] | Kuwait |
| 2002 | Amman[7] | Jordan |
| 2003 | Rabat[6] | Morocco |
| 2004 | Sana'a[8] | Yemen |
| 2005 | Khartoum[9] | Sudan |
| 2006 | Muscat[10] | Oman |
| 2007 | Algiers[11] | Algeria |
| 2008 | Damascus[12] | Syria |
| 2009 | Al-Quds (Jerusalem)[13][14] | State of Palestine[i] |
| 2010 | Doha[15] | Qatar |
| 2011 | Sirte | Libya |
| 2012 | Manama[16] | Bahrain |
| 2013 | Baghdad[17] | Iraq |
| 2014 | Tripoli[18] | Libya |
| 2015 | Constantine | Algeria |
| 2016 | Sfax | Tunisia |
| 2017 | Luxor[19] | Egypt |
| 2018 | Oujda[20] | Morocco |
| 2019 | Port Sudan[21] | Sudan |
| 2020 | Bethlehem[21] | State of Palestine |
| 2021 | Irbid[21] | Jordan |
| 2022 | Kuwait City[21] | Kuwait |
| 2023 | Tripoli[21] | Lebanon |
| i. | ^ The award for Jerusalem was presented to "Palestine"[22] but Israel controls all of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem (captured in the Six-Day War in 1967 and designated as a part of the Israeli-occupied territories), and unilaterally designated the whole of the city as its own indivisible capital, and has enacted the Jerusalem Law to that effect in a move denounced by the UN Security Council. Jerusalem was unilaterally designated as the capital of the State of Palestine (Arabic: دولة فلسطين, romanized: Dawlat Filastin), officially simply Palestine, by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1988, and again by the Palestinian Legislative Council in May 2002.[23] Palestine is a member of the Arab League and then Secretary-General Amr Moussa supported the Arab ministers' decision that Jerusalem be designated the Arab Capital of Culture for 2009. The city's final status awaits the outcome of future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (see "Negotiating Jerusalem", University of Maryland and Positions on Jerusalem for more information). In the context of the Arab Capital of Culture, the organising committee is Palestinian and the Israeli authorities have discouraged the holding of events in Jerusalem itself. |
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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