February23, 2010
Department of Public Information News and Media Division, •• New York
Sixty-fourth General Assembly
Plenary 71st Meeting (PM)
The General Assembly
this afternoon recognized the International Day of Nowruz, a spring
festival of Persian origin, and moved back the dates of the next
high-level dialogue on Financing for Development, as it continued its
sixty-fourth session.
According
to the preamble of the resolution on the International Day (document
A/64/L.30/Rev.2), Nowruz, which means new day, is celebrated on
21 March, the day of the vernal equinox, by more than 300 million
people worldwide as the beginning of the new year. It has been
celebrated for over 3,000 years in the Balkans, the Black Sea Basin,
the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and other regions.
The Assembly called on
Member States that celebrate the festival to study its history and
traditions with a view to disseminating that knowledge among the
international community and organizing annual commemoration events.
Welcoming the
inclusion of Nowruz into the Representative List of the Intangible
Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on 30 September 2009, the
text notes the festival’s “affirmation of life in harmony with nature,
the awareness of the inseparable link between constructive labour and
natural cycles of renewal and the solicitous and respectful attitude
towards natural sources of life”.
The text was
introduced by Azerbaijan’s representative, who said that, as a holiday
celebrated in many parts of the world with themes important to all
humanity, Nowruz encouraged intercultural dialogue and understanding.
Speaking after the Assembly took action on the draft, the
representative of Iran marked its adoption by quoting lines of the
Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi that expressed the holiday’s theme of
rebirth “on our planet and in our souls”.
* *** *
